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There are geographically opportune airfields all around; not sure if any of those have the facilities or US manpower to handle a highly sensitive asset. Turkey, perhaps, but that involves some risk.For the time being NATO is surveilling the whole of Ukraine, Baltics, North Sea and the western parts of Russia in a very public manner. That is part necessity, part a very conscious show of presence; some flights have come under Russian harassment. At any given day there have been more than a dozen flights of anything from Guardrails and Poseidons to Global Hawks etc. Notably for the last week or so only unmanned assets have flown in the Ukrainian airspace and the Global Hawks' flight paths have become highly complicated. It might be that as a security precaution - against spoofing or other hostile acts - they are flown by human ground station pilots at all times. There are currently several open source researchers following and cataloging all of these flights as they do tend to fly with transponders on.I don't know what an "RQ-180" could contribute to NATO's situational awareness at this point. Its purpose and capabilities remain speculative. I don't know whether this qualifies as an "educated" guess but perhaps clarifies the current environment somewhat.
There are geographically opportune airfields all around; not sure if any of those have the facilities or US manpower to handle a highly sensitive asset. Turkey, perhaps, but that involves some risk.
For the time being NATO is surveilling the whole of Ukraine, Baltics, North Sea and the western parts of Russia in a very public manner. That is part necessity, part a very conscious show of presence; some flights have come under Russian harassment. At any given day there have been more than a dozen flights of anything from Guardrails and Poseidons to Global Hawks etc. Notably for the last week or so only unmanned assets have flown in the Ukrainian airspace and the Global Hawks' flight paths have become highly complicated. It might be that as a security precaution - against spoofing or other hostile acts - they are flown by human ground station pilots at all times. There are currently several open source researchers following and cataloging all of these flights as they do tend to fly with transponders on.
I don't know what an "RQ-180" could contribute to NATO's situational awareness at this point. Its purpose and capabilities remain speculative. I don't know whether this qualifies as an "educated" guess but perhaps clarifies the current environment somewhat.
