Global Hawk Reaches New Milestone, Expands Operational Area

The U.S. Air Force's RQ-4 Global Hawk, a wide area surveillance unmanned aircraft system, has just completed its 100th operational mission in Southwest Asia and recently moved into the Pacific region.

 

Built by Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE:NOC), Global Hawk is operated largely out of the 69th Reconnaissance Group at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. The 69th Reconnaissance Group falls under the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, central station for the entire Global Hawk fleet based at Beale Air Force Base, California. Global Hawk is equipped with the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program sensor capable of detecting fixed and moving targets. It has been flying early operational capability (EOC) missions since September 2013, providing the high priority wide area surveillance ground moving target indicator (GMTI) capability in the U.S. Central and Africa Command regions. Full system capability will be demonstrated when the system enters initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) in the spring of next year.

 

Global Hawk GMTI EOC operations have proven the viability of the system, which expanded into the Pacific with two Global Hawk aircraft deployed to Guam to support U.S. Pacific Command peacetime surveillance requirements in the region.

 

"Global Hawk delivers tremendous capabilities," said Col. Lawrence Spinetta, commander of the 69th Reconnaissance Group. "It offers unmatched range and persistence. As a result, combatant commander demand for the RQ-4 continues to skyrocket. Operational success has led one theater after another to request support from this high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft."

 

Global Hawk has flown more than 115,000 flight hours supporting diverse global missions. Carrying a variety of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensor payloads, Global Hawk supports antiterrorism, antipiracy, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, airborne communications and information-sharing missions.

Military Test: Drones Could Refuel Themselves Mid-Air

U.S. military flight tests have shown how drones could handle midair refueling by themselves, without human pilots. That raises the possibility of automated "flying gas stations" topping off robotic aircraft over future battlefields.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently flew two modified RQ-4 Global Hawk drones in close proximity to simulate midair refueling. The Global Hawks, huge drones with 131-foot wingspans used for high-altitude surveillance, flew in formation with less than 100 feet separating the refueling "probe" on one and refueling "receiver" on the other during a two-and-a-half hour flight test.

"The goal of this demonstration was to create the expectation that future [High Altitude Long Endurance] aircraft will be refueled in flight," said Jim McCormick, program manager at DARPA.

Neither Global Hawk drone needed human guidance during the final flight test at the high altitude of 44,800 feet (8 miles). The drones also maintained their tight formation despite turns and wind gusts of up to 23 mph.

DARPA had kicked off its two-year Autonomous High-Altitude Refueling (AHR) program with the expectation that just one out of six aerial refueling attempts would prove successful. But the final analysis suggested drones could achieve a much better success rate of three out of five attempts.

The results from the AHR program that ended on Sept. 30 mean the U.S. military has a good chance of extending the duration and range of its drone swarms. Manned fighter jets and bombers already do midair refueling from standard tanker aircraft, but many drones can't match the speed, altitude or performance of existing tanker aircraft.

McCormick suggested that the drone flight-testing could lead to "non-traditional tanker concepts," perhaps a reference to automated drone tankers. Such an idea could work very well for the range of midsize or large drones that depend on jet fuel.

The U.S. military has also played with other refueling ideas for drones. Lasers could do midair recharging for smaller, battery-powered drones, such as the Stalker drone flown by U.S. Special Forces. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has plans for its aircraft-size X-47B drone, — designed to take off and land on Navy aircraft carriers — to autonomously handle aerial refueling with standard tanker aircraft.

Global Hawk Stalked By Reaper

Despite the U.S. Navy selecting the RQ-4 Global Hawk as its robotic maritime patrol aircraft, rival UAV manufacturer Global Atomics has gone ahead and developed a maritime patrol version of its MQ-9 Reaper UAV. Called the Reaper ER (for Extended Range), this model can stay in the air 40 hours at a time and carry about a ton of cameras, radars and communications gear. Given the rapid development of smaller, lighter, and more rugged sensor technology in the last two decades, a Reaper ER can be very competitive with the naval version of the navalized RQ-4, known as BAMS (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance).

Earlier this year BAMS began operating with the fleet. Circling above the task force at 22,500 meters (70,000 feet), BAMS monitored sea traffic off the Iranian coast and the Straits of Hormuz. Anything suspicious was checked out by carrier or land based aircraft, or nearby warships. The BAMS aircraft fly a 24 hour sortie every three days. The first production BAMS will be available in a few months, and these models will begin entering service in three years.

The navy plans to buy 20 BAMS and 117 P-8As to replace 250 P-3Cs. This replacement process is supposed to be complete in about a decade. The new surveillance aircraft provide more information over a wider area.

The U.S. Air Force recently stopped buying RQ-4s and is planning on selling some of those it already has. The RQ-4 has a range of over 22,000 kilometers and a cruising speed of 650 kilometers an hour. The first three RQ-4Bs entered service in 2006. At 13 tons, the Global Hawk is the size of a commuter airliner (like the Embraer ERJ 145), but costs nearly twice as much. Global Hawk can be equipped with much more powerful and expensive sensors, which more than double the cost of the aircraft. These "spy satellite quality" sensors (especially AESA radar) are usually worth the expense because they enable the UAV, flying at over 20,000 meters (62,000 feet), to get a sharp picture of all the territory it can see from that altitude. The B version is supposed to be a lot more reliable. Early A models tended to fail and crash at the rate of once every thousand flight hours.

The U.S. Air Force found the B model was not enough of an improvement in reliability, and was increasingly unhappy with a lack of cooperation from the manufacturer. General Atomics has a much better relationship with its users, and noted that nations like Israel and India were having success using smaller UAVs (more like the 1.2 ton Predator than the 4.6 ton Reaper) for maritime reconnaissance. So General Atomics is going after the naval reconnaissance market, including the one Northrup Grumman has with BAMS.

The maritime UAV is seen as the ultimate replacement for all manned maritime patrol aircraft. The P-8A will probably be the last manned naval search aircraft. Some countries are using satellite communications to put the sensor operators who staff manned patrol aircraft on the ground. Some nations propose sending aircraft like the P-3 or P-8 aloft with just their flight crews, having all the other gear operated from the ground. This enables the aircraft to stay in the air longer and carry more gear. The major remaining issue is reliability. UAVs are becoming more reliable, but the crashes drive up the cost of operating a UAV fleet. A BAMS crashed on June 11th, during a test flight. Last December a Reaper crashed in the Seychelles Islands, while returning from a maritime surveillance mission (looking for Somali pirates).

Navy UAV crashes in Md.; no injuries reported

A huge unmanned aircraft operated by the Navy crashed Monday along Maryland’s eastern shore, the Navy confirmed, but no injuries or personnel damage has been reported.

The crash, at about 12:11 Eastern time, reportedly took place in a marshy area of the Nanticoke River, near Bloodsworth Island in Dorchester, Md., about 20 miles from the city of Salisbury.

The Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Demonstrator (BAMS-D) aircraft, a modified Air Force Global Hawk RQ-4, is operated from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., as part of the overall BAMS development program. The jet-powered plane, one of the largest unmanned vehicles operated by the U.S. military, has a wingspan of more than 130 feet, although it is only about 47 feet long. The Navy operates at least five BAMS demonstrators, some of which have been deployed to Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The first built-for-the-purpose MQ-4C BAMS is to be unveiled Thursday by Northrop Grumman at its facility in Palmdale, Calif. The Navy plans on acquiring more than a 100 of the aircraft, which are key to the service’s ability to keep watch on vast areas of ocean and land.

Aerial video from WBOC-TV showed a plane-shaped indentation surrounded by burning debris at the swampy crash site.

The cause is being investigated, and the Coast Guard has set up a safety zone around the crash site, officials said.