Gorgon Stare, a wide-area surveillance system carried experimentally by MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft in Afghanistan, isn’t necessarily going to make a big reduction possible in the number of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance RPAs, said Col. Brandon Baker during a press briefing Friday to roll out the Air Force’s new RPA Vector roadmap. Baker said Gorgon Stare “solved a unique problem” in Afghanistan, but may not be broadly applicable to USAF’s future needs. A second iteration of the pod has been tried operationally and will be followed by a six-month evaluation to see how its capabilities could be used in future versions of the Reaper, he said. USAF officials could not discuss the niche of the classified RQ-170 Sentinel stealth RPA in the Vector; Col. Ken Callahan, with the RPA capabilities office, said while it is a USAF program, “It’s not in our portfolio.” The MQ-X—a putative stealth follow-on to the Reaper, which has been playing budget peek-a-boo for several years, seems to be part of the Vector, but is morphing into a modular system adaptable to a range of missions. Fundamentally, USAF needs a multipurpose RPA that can survive and operate in a “highly contested” anti-access, area-denial environment.
NATO Scrambles Fighter in Newest Response to Russian Drones
Sept. 16, 2025
NATO scrambled its first fighter Sept. 13 under its new plan to bolster its defenses against Russian air incursions that was put into place after an array of Russian drones flew into Polish airspace last week, the officials from the alliance’s military command said.
