It looks like a supersized pelican, bulbous head and wide wings on a slim fuselage topped with a gaping air intake for its Rolls-Royce AE3007H jet engine near a V-shaped tail.
And as the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton flew in last week from California to its new home at Naval Station Mayport, one other thing was obvious to observers — there's no cockpit for a pilot.
That's because the Triton is an unmanned drone aircraft, flown remotely from a Naval Air Station Jacksonville operations center. The first of up to four planned for the VUP-19 drone squadron's new Mayport homeport, it will handle the Navy's East Coast surveillance and search-and-rescue operations.
Read the rest of this story at WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Union.