RQ-170 Stealth UAV. (Photograph courtesy of Secret Défense)

A few months ago, I interviewed Col. Pete Gersten, wing commander of the 432nd Wing Nevada, about the future of Air Force unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Mid-interview, he paused and dropped a wink. "If you can imagine it, we're doing it," he said cryptically. We spoke of stealth designs, unique airframes that deviated from the current MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper and new missions. I of course pressed Gersten for technical details over the course of two interviews--the former F-16 pilot reminded me that he was trained to resist interrogation and yielded nothing.

Then, about two weeks ago, a French blog published a photo of the craft, nicknamed the Beast of Kandahar by the secret-aircraft-following community. It appears to be a stealth, jet-powered UAV with no tail and has fat, round sensor pods on top of the wings.

Now, the ace reporters at Aviation Week's Ares blog got the Air Force to admit the existence of a secret UAV program that fits Gersten's description.

The RQ-170 Sentinel has been operating out of Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan since 2007. It was developed byLockheed Martin's secretive aviation shop, nicknamed Skunk Works. The "R" designation means it is not armed, and the fact that the 432nd Wing operates it indicates that the aircraft supports troops on the ground, not spy agencies.

It bothers me that I was exposed to hints of the aircraft's existence, without being able to ferret it out myself. I even called General Atomics, the maker of the Predator and Reaper, to see if there was some stealth UAV out there. They had no idea what I was talking about. (The RQ-107 reportedly operates out of a GA hangar in Kandahar, but the folks I spoke to wouldn't know this.)

When I spoke with him, Gersten said that UAV technology is moving so fast that retrofitting current UAVs is futile. "We are going to replace these before they fail," he said. So get ready to learn about more secret UAVs in the future. Early next year the Air Force will probably select candidates for the next-generation UAV program, which will replace the Reaper in armed reconnaissance missions (the government documents of this can be found here). The UAV in that program is expected to be operational in 2015. Lockheed's candidate for the program, often called MQ-X, can be found here. In general, the next-generation UAV will be jet-powered and will have more autonomous functions and stealthy features. It could also have the ability to be used for enemy air-defense suppression missions, taking out enemy radar with missiles that track their emissions.