For a lot of your questions, I think this thing is going to be marketed for defense purpose as a HALE (high altitude, long endurance) sensor platform that costs significantly less in purchase cost, and operating cost, than a global hawk. There's already companies flying retrofitted King Air and similar for this purpose for the DoD.
If it can carry 500 kilos at 65,000 ft for 24 hours without landing, and not cost a ridiculous amount in dollars per flight hour, that's something pretty unique.
In my totally non expert opinion the undercarriage and very low ground clearance also tell me it's intended to fly from paved strips in pristine condition, which is very different than the rough field capabilities of many single and twin airplanes powered by the PT6 turboprop or one of its derivatives.
That doesn’t really line up with how defense aircraft (or defense anything, for that matter) are financed and designed. Aircraft designs are created as part of a response to a Department of Defense request for proposal and design details are kept highly secret (they won’t even file patents to ensure that no details about the aircraft are leaked). Then the craft are tested from military bases to prevent people taking pictures. Also, a defense craft wouldn’t be seeking FAA approval (the FAA isn’t authorized to regulate military aircraft)
Not all, necessarily, they may have created the design with a HALE market as one of several market possibilities. Companies have self funded r&d projects to build things and then try to sell them to defence markets before. Scaled composites did it with their Ares, and so has embraer with their turboprop ground support plane.
Here's an example of a retrofit of a COTS platform for bespoke sensor platform use.
Maybe in the cold war, but these days there are plenty of repurposed civilian aircraft. They just swap out the avionics with some nicer things, add good cameras, and have a useable and proven platform. The airframe details are self-evident enough that they may not be worth keeping secret.
If it can carry 500 kilos at 65,000 ft for 24 hours without landing, and not cost a ridiculous amount in dollars per flight hour, that's something pretty unique.
In my totally non expert opinion the undercarriage and very low ground clearance also tell me it's intended to fly from paved strips in pristine condition, which is very different than the rough field capabilities of many single and twin airplanes powered by the PT6 turboprop or one of its derivatives.