A mysterious plane was captured over the 🇵🇭 Philippines

​​A mysterious plane was captured over the 🇵🇭 Philippines

The Philippines is located between the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea, two disputed and heavily guarded areas over which a large amount of military activity, especially 🇨🇳 Chinese and 🇺🇲 American, is regularly observed. All types of military aircraft fly constantly in the skies over both seas, from bombers to unmanned aerial vehicles, but on September 2, at about 6:15 a.m. local time, photographer Michael Fugnit captured something completely unique in his lens, namely an aircraft with a diamond-shaped fuselage and thin wings, with two engines located in the center. The aircraft pictured is very similar to the one seen in October 2020, the Northrop Grumman RQ-180 high-altitude, unobtrusive drone. It is believed that the RQ-180 is currently in very limited use as it is still under secret development. The flight of an aircraft in this region makes perfect sense, the UAV is designed to conduct reconnaissance in "inaccessible" or "contested" airspace, it can also be just a transit flight to another place, including back to the United States.

The RQ-180 is intended to fill the niche in reconnaissance operations previously occupied by the SR-71 Blackbird supersonic reconnaissance aircraft.