Help- US Drone Identification Needed

StormILM

StormILM

Charter Member
Need a little help identifying this Drone. It landed near Carolina Beach sometime last night or early this morning. A bystander snapped this photo before the drone was rapidly recovered(by whom exactly we do not clearly know). I'm just not up on Drone types except the major types. Some sources seem to indicate it is either a target drone or "pinger" (for testing radar and other tracking sensors). It appears to have deployed a recovery chute system and having landed nearly vertically. Any ideas? (Mods, please move this thread if need be. I wanted to post it in this section to get better exposure for the time being).

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The general configuration and size is pretty much a Beech MQM-39, though the chines on the fues and longer wings are different, though I'd only ever messed about with the variants from 20 some odd years ago. Drone and RPV models come a bewildering number of variants, and the modular nature means different hulls, wings, pods, tow bodies- you get the Idea.Carolina Beach? So it probably belongs to the Navy or Marines; or a contractor to. The Chined fueselage is interesting. A bit more digging suggests is a Griffon MQM-170 Outlaw, though they are usually fitted with a pusher engine. I guess they come in tractor configuration too. Maybe Push-Pull?
 
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