Earlier this afternoon, a Navy drone on a test run crashed on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The wrecked unmanned aerial vehicle was one of the Navy’s five Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrators, which are modified versions of the Air Force’s Global Hawk RQ4, according to Navy Times.
The drone, which cost an estimated $100 million, weighed in at more than 10 tons, with a wingspan of more than 130 feet. Other Navy BAM-S aircraft are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq in surveillance missions.
“No one was hurt except the Navy’s pride. But ouch, that pride,” Spencer Ackerman writes on Wired’s Danger Room. But the Navy is still trying to sound proud: “BAMS-D supports more than 50 percent of maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in theater and has flown more than 5,500 combat hours in support of combat operations since 2008,” an official statement about the crash says.
View the wreckage below.
