Video: Is This The Fabled Beast of Kandahar?

The Air Force’s top secret stealth drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, may have just been spotted. A short video posted to YouTube over the weekend appears to show the batwing-shaped drone flying against a desert horizon in Nevada. The unarmed aircraft, famously dubbed “the Beast of Kandahar” after it made a surprise appearance on a runway in the southern Afghan province in 2007, has been used for highly classified missions, such as spying on Iran and eyeballing Osama Bin Laden’s residence in advance of the raid that killed the al Qaeda leader.

Back in December 2011, Iran claimed to have shot down one of the Lockheed Martin-made drones over Iranian airspace, and then in November 2014, released a video of its own version of the drone, which it claims to have reverse engineered. One observer called the Iranian bird more of a “remote controlled toy,” than an actual operational spy plane, however.

There have also been reports of the drone at a U.S. Air Base in Guam, as well as other snippets of grainy video. But this new video — first flagged by our friends over at Defense Tech — is the closest look yet we’ve had of the aircraft actually airborne.

Photo Credit: YouTube