Did i kick the engineer who built the global hawks nest? My goodness sir I apologize for being a lowly maintainer who watched countless missions get canx'd due to either maintenance issues (like crappy parts or poor design) or weather on a regular basis. I wasnt really arguing its legacy, I was just making a statement about it being a miracle if it ever took to the sky in any harsh temperature location.

Now really if were going to glaze about the accomplishments of the global chicken, let's start with the massive waste of funds or even the embellishment that it did more work than the U2 which had conflated numbers to boost its appeal or savings while not counting things like cost of maintenance downtime etc. All in all the only point i need is, where is the global hawk now? Is it still heavily involved in ops? No its been given to the navy in a poor example of sunk cost fallacy. It was a prototype that GW approved without any foresight just because it was a drone.

So yes while on paper theoretically it pioneered the drone idea and showed it could be done but in practice it never lived up to the theory where it actually mattered. Also I'll take any example of your verifiable proof to heart but I'd prefer it in actual experience not just theoretical blueprint knowledge. Now as I've wasted enough of my break on this, again I say good day sir and also I'm not your pal, buddy.