The United States Navy is taking to the skies with a drone featuring a longer wingspan than that of a Boeing 757 airliner. Now that the new MQ-4C Triton has completed its ninth trial flight, the Northrop Grumman-manufactured drone is being hailed as an improvement over the unmanned aerial vehicle it’s set to replace, the Air Force’s Global Hawk. It’s currently unclear if the Triton will be equipped with weapons.
The U.S. Navy and giant defense contractor Northrop Grumman announced that their next massive spy drone has completed its first nine initial test flights, the first significant step toward future deployment. The MQ-4C drone is nicknamed Triton, after the Greek god who worked as the messenger of Poseidon, the god of the sea. Just like its mythological counterpart, Triton will assist the P-8A Poseidon, Boeing’s manned war plane; it is supposedly the heir of the older RQ-4 Global Hawk, which took off for the first time in 1998.