New Military Recon Aircraft

[Ben]

I haven't seen this yet, though I guess it has been in development for at least a year. This short article popped up on my news feed, but googling "HO3" didn't give me any more detailed results.

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19898/mysterious-northrop-grumman-spy-plane-emerges-at-the-mojave-air-and-space-port

[Brad Johnson]

Northrop Firebird, or a least a very close member of the same family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Firebird

*edit to add* Should have read the article all the way through. They do indeed mention it's an evolutionary step in the Firebird program.

Brad

[HeroHog]

Update:

The aircraft in question happens to be an evolved iteration of Scaled Composites Firebird optionally manned long-endurance aircraft. The original Firebird had a similar configuration but was a far more experimental looking affair and was about 30% smaller than the second iteration. Apparently, the second seat was added to the updated design at the behest of a still unknown buyer so that a copilot/payload operator could accompany the pilot when on manned missions.

The aircraft can fly without a crew onboard. When unmanned, a ground control station commands the aircraft via line-of-sight (LOS) data-links or a beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) satellite communications package that fits inside the cockpit. For the BLOS mode, the cockpit instruments come out and the canopy is replaced by a radome fairing that guards the satellite communications dish against the elements.