On March 30th, we recorded the arrival of a US Navy Northrop Grumman MQ-4C “Triton” (reg. 169659, c/s TRITON16) at NAS Sigonella.
The drone then conducted its first operational mission off the coast of Libya yesterday.
One could have assumed that the unmanned aircraft was deployed for some operational testing in the Mediterranean, but evidently, that’s not the case. We say this because this morning, a second “Triton” (reg. 169660) arrived directly from Florida to Sigonella.
This indicates that the US Navy intends to utilize this type of asset in the Mediterranean for a certain period of time and has therefore brought a second drone to the Sicilian base to ensure operational capability in case the first one becomes unavailable.