The future of Navy spy tech - A surveillance drone that covers 2 million square miles at a time means that around-the-clock maritime surveillance isn't far off

Clay Dillow FORTUNE The Navy's X-47B unmanned combat jet captured headlines and imaginations earlier this summer when it took off and then landed on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George H.W. Bush. The event marked the first time an unmanned, autonomous aircraft has pulled off such a feat. In doing so, the sleek, stealthy, robotic X-47B ginned up a great deal of hype and speculation surrounding the future of naval aviation and the role these aircraft -- still in their prototype phase -- might play in future conflicts. But meanwhile, the more immediate future of unmanned, autonomous maritime aviation -- and a critical piece of the U.S. military's "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region -- is shaping up in Palmdale, Calif., where the Navy's MQ-4C Triton completed its fourth successful test flight last week. Autonomous aircraft plying the skies over the world's oceans are closer than many might think. The differences between the Navy's long-term plan to field semi-stealthy combat drones and its far more immediate initiative to field a persistent reconnaissance capability over the world's oceans are myriad, but the reason they're worth mentioning in the same sentence is that both platforms demonstrate the absolutely massive impact that autonomous flight will have on civilian and military aviation in the years ahead. And the most striking difference? The X-47B is a technology demonstrator that will never see active service. Triton, on the other hand, is an active Navy development program navigating a tough fiscal environment toward initial operating capacity in as few as four years. If the Triton platform works as advertised, it will provide the U.S. Navy with an unparalleled ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) advantage over the world's oceans, including the ability to observe 2 million square miles of ocean per day via a single aircraft, a capability dwarfing that of the best manned recon planes in the air today. "What we're going to have is the most capable aircraft in all weather conditions," Capt. James Hoke told reporters gathered at last week's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show in Washington D.C., one of the world's biggest trade shows for unmanned technologies. That kind of persistent, around-the-clock situational awareness on the high seas will be a game-changer for the Navy going forward, Hoke says. Once fully fielded in 2017, the idea is that the Navy's Tritons will always be in the sky, observing and tracking every military and civilian vessel within 2,000 nautical miles of each aircraft -- or across 2 million nautical square miles per each 24-hour flight. to read more click here: FORTUNE