Drone Aircraft: Europe has a killer stealth drone aircraft and it's ready to put it to use

Neuron: European drone stealth aircraft in flight

The 12m wingspan UAV — built through a partnership between France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and Greece — had its first successful takeoff last month. But it isn’t ever going to be sent into a real combat zone.

It’s a concept design — but it will eventually, The Aviationist reports, spawn real killer drones that go into full production.

The aircraft, which has no vertical tail in order to make it as furtive as possible, flew for 25 minutes on under the watcful eyes of two test pilots based on the ground.

“It inaugurates the next generation of combat aircraft, whether piloted or not, with the ambition of preserving European autonomy in this field,” the French defense ministry said in a statement.

The statement added, “It’s a major accomplishment on both the technological and industrial levels.” 

And the nEUROn isn’t going to just fly around and look scary: once its operators are able to scoot it around without crashing, The Aviationist says it’ll head to “Perdasdefogu range in Italy, where its stealthiness and capability to drop PGM (Precision Guided Munitions) through the internal weapon bay, will be evaluated.”

"Bombs away". You didn’t think an entire continent with 500 million people was going to let the USA be the only ones with sci-fi guns, did you?

EU-Digest