Revealed: The Air Force's top secret new spy drone with a 130 FOOT wingspan that is being tested in Area 51

• The Air Force’s new secret superspy plane is flying in the airspace above Area 51 and will likely be ready for missions by 2015
• The large unmanned RQ-180, developed by Northrop Grumman, is designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions
• New hangars at Northrop's Palmdale, California, site and at the Air Force's Area 51 test center in Groom Lake, Nevada, have been built to hold an aircraft with a wing span of more than 130 feet
• It is set to take the place of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s RQ-170 Sentinel, the plane used in the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 21:34 EST, 6 December 2013 | UPDATED: 04:17 EST, 7 December 2013

The Air Force’s new secret superspy plane is flying in the airspace above Area 51 and will likely be ready for missions by 2015.

The large, classified unmanned RQ-180, developed by Northrop Grumman, is designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.

The secret unmanned aerial system (UAS), funded through the Air Force’s classified budget, was awarded to Northrop Grumman after a competition that included Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Stealth in the sky: The Air Force's new secret superspy plane, the RQ-180, is flying in the airspace above Area 51 and will likely be ready for missions by 2015. This is an artist rendering of what it will look like

The aircraft will conduct intelligence missions that have been left unaddressed, and under wide debate, since the retirement of the Lockheed SR-71 in 1998, according to Aviation Week.

It is also set to take the place of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s RQ-170 Sentinel, which was the plane used in the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden.

Although the new plane is top secret and details of it have yet to be released, it is definitely very big.

Publicly available overhead imagery shows that new hangars at Northrop's Palmdale, California, site and at the Air Force's Area 51 test center in Groom Lake, Nevada, have been built to hold an aircraft with a wing span of more than 130 feet.

This makes it much bigger than the RQ-170, which has an estimated wingspan of between 65 feet and 90 feet.

The RQ-180 carries radio-frequency sensors such as active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and passive electronic surveillance measures, according to Aviation Week. It could also be capable of electronic attack missions.

Area 51: A dirt road that leads to the restricted Area 51. The stealth plane is reportedly flying over this area already as the Air Force is making trial runs

Top secret: The classified unmanned RQ-180, developed by Northrop Grumman, is designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. it is being tested over Area 51, pictured, at the moment

The Air Force nor Northrop Grumman have wished to comment on the classified airplane.

Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Cassidy said that the Air Force ‘does not discuss this program’.

This aircraft’s design is key for the shift of Air Force ISR assets away from ‘permissive’ environments - such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where Northrop Grumman’s non-stealthy Global Hawk and General Atomics’ Reaper operate - and toward operations in ‘contested’ or ‘denied’ airspace, according to Aviation Week.

Big plane: Publicly available overhead imagery shows that new hangars at Northrop's Palmdale, California, site and at the Air Force's Area 51 test center in Groom Lake, Nevada, have been built to hold an aircraft with a wing span of more than 130 feet

The new UAS underpins the Air Force’s determination to retire a version of the RQ-4B Global Hawk after 2014, despite congressional resistance. The RQ-180 eclipses the smaller, less stealthy and shorter-range RQ-170 Sentinel.

The plane will be another to the growing fleet manufactured by Northrop Grumman. The latest was the Triton unmanned aircraft system which completed its first flight from the Northrop Grumman manufacturing facility in Palmdale on May 22.

The 80-minute flight successfully demonstrated control systems that allow Triton to operate autonomously. Triton is designed to fly surveillance missions up to 24-hours at altitudes of more than 10 miles, allowing coverage out to 2,000 nautical miles.

Fleet of UAS planes: The Triton unmanned aircraft system is shown completing its first flight from the Northrop Grumman manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California, in May

If the previous patterns for secret ISR aircraft operations are followed for the RQ-180, the new UAV will be jointly controlled by the Air Force and the CIA.

This arrangement has been used for the RQ-170, which is operated by the Air Force’s 30th Reconnaissance Sqdn., according to a fact sheet the Air Force released after one of the aircraft turned up in Iran in December 2011.

The Iranians proudly displayed on state television a stealthy U.S. unmanned aircraft it claimed it had downed while conducting reconnaissance overflights, which turned out to be the RQ-170.

Northrop Grumman’s financial reports point to a possible award of a secret UAS contract in 2008, when the company disclosed a $2 billion increase in the backlog in its Integrated Systems division, said Aviation Week.

This year, Northrop Grumman financial reports acknowledged that an unnamed aircraft program entered low-rate initial production, the Pentagon term for low-volume deliveries that begin as testing and near completion, and before the program is approved for full production.