US Marine Corps looking to make MQ-9 drones stealthy with special pods

The US Marines are trying to make their Reaper drones more difficult to detect by equipping them with a secretive high-tech pod that can counter enemy sensors, according to the service’s top officer, Report informs via DefenseScoop.

The littoral combat regiments that the Corps is standing up are expected to receive the drones, which are built by General Atomics.

“What they bring with them is a sensing and making-sense capability,” Commandant General Eric Smith said Tuesday at a Brookings Institution event.

“Some of the pods that go on our MQ-9s are classified … [so] I’ll be careful here,” he said. There’s a type of pod that “can mimic things that are sent to it that it detects, turn it around and send it back. So it becomes a hole, it becomes a black hole, it becomes mostly undetectable.”