“Our mission is to provide those airplanes as targets for our Department of Defense and foreign military sales customers to test the next generation of weapons. Sometimes, that is a missile, sometimes a surface-to-air missile. For the final unmanned flight, we flew in support of an F-35 mission.”
Source: Lt. Col. Ronald King, the 82nd Aerial Targets Squadron, Detachment 1 commander discussing the QF-4 Phantom that flew its final unmanned mission in the skies above White Sands Missile Range on August 17. During the flight, the unmanned aircraft served its primary mission as an aerial target and was shot down by an F-35 Lightning II from Edwards Air Force Base, California.