New movies give a good clearer view – unquestionably our greatest ever – of the legendary labeled stealth drone, beforehand seen making an emergency touchdown in Greece final month.
Final month, we reported on photographs taken in Larissa, Greece, exhibiting what we, and others, concluded – primarily based on prior sightings and remark from acquainted sources – was the U.S. Air Power’s secretive and nonetheless undisclosed ‘RQ-180’ stealth UAV. We have no idea the official designation for this airframe, so we, like many others, use the label RQ-180 in lieu of this.
The plane had apparently appeared in daylight over Greece owing to an in flight emergency, requiring a diversion – although this may increasingly have been a canopy story linked to the clearly incorrect rationalization that it was a B-2 Spirit. As we reported, Larissa will not be unfamiliar to U.S. drone operations. After information of the video trickled out, the plane rapidly picked up the colloqial nickname ‘Woman of Larissa’.
Now, in latest days, much more video footage from Greece has emerged on-line, taken by The Aviationist reader Efthymios Siakaras, exhibiting a view virtually straight beneath the plane because it apparently makes an strategy to land.
The brand new, nearer angle permits us to see particulars on the plane we’ve by no means beforehand been capable of make out. We’ve got a transparent view of the jet’s touchdown gear configuration (which definitively guidelines out any query of this being a B-21 Raider), in addition to an excellent take a look at what seems to be a big clear aperture for seen gentle or infrared sensors fitted flush to the stomach of the airframe.
Although we may guess beforehand about what sensors could or is probably not carried by the RQ-180, this video provides us our first obvious affirmation of what its payload can embody. Almost certainly, the plane has been designed with a big selection of sensor capabilities, together with artificial aperture radar (SAR) and alerts intelligence (SIGINT) tools.
Some sensor payloads could also be interchangeable for different configurations primarily based on the mission sort, or the configurations could differ based on particular airframes throughout the whole fleet. 9 pre-production examples of the RQ-180 are identified to exist, as recorded by Peter Merlin, and round twice as many manufacturing airframes are thought to have subsequently been constructed. These plane could even sport totally different paint schemes, with some paintings seen in mission patches and logos hinting at dark-coloured airframes in addition to the ‘White Bat’ or ‘Shikaka’ fashion examples.
We’re additionally capable of clearly see the plane’s management surfaces in motion. Pretty conventional flaperons are evident on every wing, although we are able to additionally see a management floor on the rear of the fuselage. That is comparable to what’s seen on each the B-2 Spirit and B-21 Raider. Within the case of the B-2, this management floor has regularly been labelled the ‘beaver tail’ – extra formally it is called the Gust Load Alleviation System or GLAS.
The earliest movies taken by Siakaras had been printed on Mar. 11, 2026, which aligns with the onlarissa.gr article’s point out that the pictures it featured on Mar. 18 had been from ‘the top of final week’. Newer movies are dated inside the 24 hours of writing this text, exhibiting cloudy gray skies as a substitute of the blue skies within the different movies.
This might assist the concept that Larissa is in truth getting used as an everyday ahead working location for the RQ-180, as beforehand urged by actions of C-17s to the bottom direct from Edwards Air Power Base, California (close to to Palmdale’s Plant 42 the place the RQ-180 was most certainly developed by Northrop Grumman).
These photographs are actually attention-grabbing as they clarify the 2 C-17s which flew from Edwards Air Power Base to Larissa Air Base in Greece in early March and late February.
Boeing C-17 Globemaster III 2x#AE07F8 97-0046 – REACH 532 (9 Mar)#AE1196 03-3113 – REACH 432 (25 Feb)… pic.twitter.com/EnKMatkh1w
— Armchair Admiral 🇬🇧 (@ArmchairAdml) March 18, 2026
One other C-17 flight from Edwards to Larissa (with stopovers) arrived and subsequently departed on the morning of Apr. 6 as REACH 1844.
Larissa does have two attention-grabbing hangars, far-off from different constructed up areas of the airfield, which can have been constructed to assist clandestine drone operations. Notably the U.S. MQ-9 Reapers primarily based there are as a substitute identified to function from hangars to the north of the airfield (as additionally seen on satellite tv for pc imagery), fairly than these two. Based mostly on historic satellite tv for pc imagery, the hangars had been constructed inside the previous couple of years.
It has beforehand been thought that the most certainly RQ-180 ahead bases in Europe can be at RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus or Naval Air Station Sigonella on Sicily. Akrotiri, specifically, is sort of properly fitted to this use case, being owned and operated by a 5 Eyes ally and current inside sovereign territory used virtually completely for navy functions, bordered on three sides by open sea.
Larissa, nevertheless, would possibly supply added flexibility to RQ-180 (and, it needs to be famous, RQ-170) operations and should have been developed with Black Sea and even Ukraine overflight missions in thoughts. Although additional inland than the opposite two choices, primarily working at night time may mitigate no less than some extent of publicity danger. Moreover, plane recognizing at navy installations exterior of official occasions is closely restricted in Greece and has resulted in unfamiliar international vacationers being arrested and charged on a number of events.
The Northrop Grumman RQ-180 touchdown at Larissa air base in Greece yesterday. That is the primary time the general public has heard what a 180 appears like. 😎🤙 pic.twitter.com/iYZWHQaSai
— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) March 19, 2026
The RQ-180 is believed to have been in frontline use for fairly a while, and it was solely an eventuality that in some unspecified time in the future it will start making extra public appearances. An official reveal of the plane has been urged as an upcoming risk by business commentators for quite a lot of years, however none has but been forthcoming.
As a substitute, the approaching in-service date of the B-21 Raider might need been judged by U.S. authorities to supply a good higher approach to preserve the RQ-180’s exercise underneath wraps because the planform of the 2 plane is analogous, far more so than the B-2 with its sawtooth trailing edge launched late in improvement to enhance low altitude efficiency.
If the RQ-180 does proceed to get extra of a public highlight, the query that is still is what, if something, would possibly the U.S. Air Power have within the wings that takes the RQ-180’s capabilities to the following degree?
