By NATHAN HODGE

A highflying surveillance drone being tested by the Navy crashed Monday in eastern Maryland, the military said.
The Navy said in a statement that a Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Demonstrator, or BAMS-D, unmanned aircraft went down around midday in a swampy area near Bloodsworth Island, in Dorchester County.
No casualties were reported, Petty Officer Jonathan Lindberg, a Coast Guard spokesman, said. "We have a boat out there, and they are establishing a 500-yard safety zone around where it crashed," he said.
The aircraft was one of five Global Hawk drones the service acquired from the Air Force to test as high-altitude maritime surveillance aircraft. The $100 million craft, which is unarmed, can carry a range of payloads, from sophisticated cameras to eavesdropping equipment.
Global Hawks have flown reconnaissance missions over war zones in Afghanistan and Libya, and surveyed the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Last year, the U.S. military used the pilotless aircraft to monitor a stricken nuclear reactor in Japan. The Air Force has stationed Global Hawks in both the Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
The Navy has long been interested in developing pilotless aircraft for everything from monitoring shipping lanes to assessing hurricane damage. According to a Navy fact sheet, the aircraft can stay aloft for more than 30 hours, soaring over 60,000 feet above the ground. The aircraft are flown from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.
The Global Hawks are manufactured by Northrop Grumman Corp. Earlier this year, as part of budget cutbacks, the Air Force said it would halt purchases of one version of the Global Hawk in favor of keeping the Cold War-era U-2 spy plane flying. In a statement, Northrop said it was "working closely with the U.S. Navy to determine the cause of the incident."
Write to Nathan Hodge at [email protected]