North Korea appears to be testing a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system resembling the United States' RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude unmanned surveillance drone.

NK News, a U.S. news website on North Korea, said that its analysis of satellite imagery from last Thursday by Planet Labs detected a new UAV outside the hangar at Banghyun Air Base in North Korea.

The report said that the previous replica of the Global Hawk that North Korea had produced had a wingspan of 35 meters, but the figure for the new model increased to 40 meters and the color of the aircraft has also become more similar to that of the Global Hawk.

Equipped with high-performance radar and infrared detection equipment, the Global Hawk can perform tasks to a range of up to three thousand kilometers and distinguish objects on the ground as small as 30 centimeters across from an altitude of 20 kilometers.

North Korea also has attack drones in its arsenal named Saetbyol-9 and Saetbyol-4 resembling the MQ-9 Reaper, an unmanned reconnaissance and strike aircraft built by General Atomics for the U.S. Air Force.