How It Works-Amazing Vehicles

imagine a top-level spy plane to look. It has a

bulging front profi le and a somewhat chunk y

tail end, but this amazing surveillance drone is

able to fl y across the world to deliver real-time

ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and

Reconnaissance) data to its controllers at US A ir

Force ground bases.

Unmanned aircraft offer numerous

advantages for the advance of spy planes. First

of all, engineers do not need to construct a

cockpit that safeguards human life. When it

comes to creating a monster machine that

operates on the very edges of space, this is a

money, time and space-saving bonus. The other

benefi t of using a spy drone instead is that it can

keep going for longer than a mission with an

onboard pilot. Many drones can also be

pre-programmed to carr y out assignments even

if contact is lost with its base team.

One such spy drone causing ripples in aerial

reconnaissance is Northrop Grumman’s

RQ-180. Not much is known about this robot

apart from the fact that it exists, and that the

stealth drone is designated for fl ying in

defended airspace for spying on heavily armed

rival nations. It’s thought that to evade radar

detection, this drone may be designed with the

‘cranked kite’ formation, where the shape is a

fusion of the ‘kite’ and ‘fl ying’ wing formations.

The chunky and angular shapes are designed to

scatter oncoming radar waves, so that they can’t

be bounced back to their location and the plane

can fl y undetected.

Surveillance strategies

The methods that spy planes use from above to

fi nd and track mobile communication signals

1. Power up the dirtbox
   Planes are often equipped with tech known as dirtboxes, so-called for the
   initials DRT that stand for Digital Receiver Technology. They work by
   mimicking the job of telecommunication towers, tricking mobile phones
   into sending unique registration data to the dirtbox device.
   2. Scan and

single out

The dirtbox can scan thousands

of phones before it reaches its

intended target. Once the

suspect has been located and

locked on to, the DRT disregards

the other phones, and focuses on

collecting information.

MILITARY