Lockheed Martin has unveiled Vectis, a new unmanned combat drone developed by its secretive Skunk Works division, after a cryptic teaser posted online triggered speculation that the aircraft used reverse-engineered UFO technology. The stealth drone, designed to fly alongside crewed fighter jets, marks a significant addition to US military aviation, though the conspiracy theories surrounding its unveiling remain unsubstantiated, with the Pentagon and White House maintaining that no physical evidence of UFOs has ever been recovered.

Lockheed says five Vectis drones will be built by 2027, each capable of air combat, ground strikes or covert intelligence gathering. The aircraft has a tailless, flying-wing design roughly 34 feet long with a 38-foot wingspan, comparable in size to the MQ-9 Reaper and F-35, with a concealed engine intake and internally stored weapons to reduce its radar signature. Speculation about alien technology was fuelled partly by past claims from Boyd Bushman, a former Lockheed and Texas Instruments engineer who died in 2014, who alleged before his death that he had worked on reverse-engineering alien spacecraft, though his claims and accompanying photographs were never verified and were widely dismissed as showing commercial prop dolls.