The recently leaked footage of the next generation of Predator Drones has the fishing world in an uproar. Gone are the propeller driven noisy mosquitoes of yesteryear, in their place comes the sneaky-quiet atmosphere fish … the Rainbird Trout…

… meanwhile the Defense Department is a mass of denials, claiming the video of the device (found on a Northrup-Grumman engineer’s iPhone) is a hilarious fake.

“Airships or Blimps have been used by the military for the last 100 years, and were it to have offensive capabilities we would have chosen something scary like an Alligator Gar … that and it would’ve cost twice as much.”

Email recovered from the phone suggest it’s a joint NATO research effort with elements of both design and fabrication provided by the German firm, Focke Wulf, and the UK’s Bristol Beaufighter consortium.

“It’s a classic stealthy and aerodynamic design that can root out an enemy in either rocks or dense growth, capable of a violent take (sic) of a single insurgent, or feed wantonly in a target dense environment.

We called it the Rainbird because of the sound it makes from the 20mm depleted uranium Gatling we put on the prototype. Hey, there’s a bad guy, chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck …”

Additional email suggests the working name for the project is the “Trout-N-Ator”, and mentions a larger tank-busting variant – code named “Eastern Bloc-ee.”

There are obviously fishermen involved. Somewhere.