A US Navy training flight took to costly detour into a swamp in Maryland today, leading to the destruction of a $176 million RQ-4A Global Hawk drone. Officials say it is “unlikely” anyone was hurt in the crash.
The drone was sent up on a “routine training flight” from the Patuxent River air station, and lost contact with the base shortly thereafter. Aircraft found the drone burning in a swamp in Dorchester County, Maryland.
The RQ-4A is one of the most advanced and most expensive drones in the military’s fleet, and the naval version was configured for “broad area martime surveillance.” The official list price for the drone is just over $100 million, but the budget office put the price tag at $176 million in 2010, and prices have been seen rising in the past few years (South Korea abandoned their planned purchases after the price doubled).
The drones are meant to be deployed near aircraft carriers to provide constant surveillance of the area around them. The Pentagon already signed a $1.16 billion for the Naval program with Northrop Grumman the largest drone buy for the Navy so far.
Were there any survivers?!
Yes, idiocy, paranoia and the unending "war on terror."
Nathan, you are great! I can´t stop laughing!
If drones are creating so many enemies in the world, just think what we have to look forward to in America.
You just know that the crocodiles in the area (oh, I forgot this was Maryland, so maybe they shouldn't have been there), didn't appreciate getting hit, but of course they were next to a suspect target, so they must have been guilty- after all, the Administration has absolutely no record of innocents being zapped.
Now, on the cost of the drone, $176 million. Wow! How many teachers, firemen, and social workers would that have paid for, and how many States could have used that kind of money to take care of their citizens, including their disabled vets. (Leave out the police- they are already getting armed by the military) Yet, this is probably irrelevant, since the national security state contractors are what feed Congress and provide the security we need to protect us from ourselves.
In the end, this could turn into a Seinfeld or Monty Python episode, no? Maybe we'll call it the "Bubble Drone", (glub, glub, glub).
So, whatever you do, don't vote for Hillary in 2016, (sorry, ladies, hag though she is, she will never be the subject of any serious hagiography)
NO.
Well at least water doesn't interfere with the ZM-3498 auto-destruct serializer.
"Crash and Burn". Hey, that can be the new slogan for the DOD, the U.S. government, and its policies.
Coming soon to your neighborhood!
See? It's just a fluke. Stuff like this will never happen when drones are deployed domestically. And if by some chance it does happen, we can rest assured knowing that only terrorists and other bad people will be killed, because they were the ones there when the thing fell on them, likely up to no good.
Shucks! So close and yet so far. If had only crashed on the Capitol. Just think how many terrorists it could have taken out at once.
Lol! Ahh man! You beat me to it. I was gonna say the same thing. We could've built a drone shrine celebrating its liberation of America!
So – my plan worked