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Edited by Noah Shachtman | Contact | RSS

NEW KILLER DRONE REVEALED

x45c3.jpgBoeing has been working for years on a flying, killer drone for the Pentagon. On Monday, the company showed off a full-scale mock-up of the latest version of this robotic fighter plane, the X-45C, for the first time.

Once it's done, the "unmanned combat aerial vehicle" is expected to weigh about four tons, carry 4,500 pounds of bombs, and have a 49-foot wingspan -- making it about 50% bigger than the X-45A. That's the plane, Defense Tech readers will recall, that recently dropped a load of smart bombs on targets in the Mojave Desert -- a first for combat drones.

The X-45C is currently being built in St. Louis, with companies like Green Hill Software supplying the operating system so the bot can attack and takeoff. It's expected to cruise at 0.85 Mach (560 mph), at an altitude of 40,000 feet. The Pentagon wants to start flying the drone over battlefields sometime after 2009.