All HALE, New Weekly Flight Record
The RQ-4 Global Hawk supports the U.S. Air Force and Navy in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Photo: Northrop Grumman.
Yesterday, Northrop Grumman Corp. announced that the U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk and other members of its High Altitude Long Endurance unmanned aircraft system series broke a weekly record for mission hours in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications.
The series flew 781 hours from Sept. 10-16 breaking the previous record of 665 hours set in February. The Air Force’s Global Hawk flew 87 percent of the missions with time also contributed by the U.S. Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstration aircraft and NASA’s hurricane research Global Hawk. The HALE UAS series has flown over 130,000 total flight hours since its inception.
“There are at least two Global Hawks in the air at all times providing indispensable ISR information to those that need it,” said Mick Jaggers, Global Hawk UAS program director, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. “The 2014 fiscal year was the most active yet for the Global Hawk, with a 40 percent year over year increase in flight hours.”
This fall, the Air Force received two new RQ-4 Global Hawks from Northrop bringing its total to 33 aircraft in the fleet. The Air Force expects delivery of 3 more Global Hawks in 2016 and 2017.
