The U. S. Navy has dispatched a high-altitude long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV) to its Seventh Fleet, which conducts missions in the Pacific theater, including the Korean Peninsula. 

According to the fleet headquarters in Yokosuka, Japan on Tuesday, the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton arrived at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam last Sunday. 

The U.S. Navy's first unmanned maritime patrol squadron, VUP-19, which was created back in October 2016, plans to operate two MQ-4Cs in Guam to build up early operational capability.

The MQ-4C is expected to carry out surveillance and reconnaissance missions, including monitoring illegal transshipments in North Korean waters and Chinese warships operating in the Pacific and South China Sea. 

The MQ-4C is capable of monitoring targets at sea around-the-clock even in inclement weather. It can fly for more than 24 hours at an altitude of 16 kilometers or higher. Its radius of operation is estimated to be over 15-thousand kilometers. Weighing nearly 15 tons, it can fly at a maximum speed of 757 kilometers per hour.