Global Hawk BAMS: Go Navy!

Sea Power, Jun 2002 by Burgess, Richard R

While Northrop Grumman was delivering the sixth RQ-4A Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the Air Force, plans to build Global Hawks for the Navy got unde rway.

The sixth RQ-4A long-range surveillance UAV-partially painted in "B-2 gray"-was procured under an advanced-- concept technology demonstration (ACTD) contract. The seventh ACTD RQ-4A is scheduled to be delivered sometime this fall. Three others remain in service; three have been lost in mishaps, including one that crashed in December during a mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. After a grounding that lasted three months, operations have resumed and two RQ-4As were flying Enduring Freedom missions as of early May.

Low-rate initial production (LRIP) was approved last March by the Department of Defense, which plans to procure 17 at a rate of two Global Hawks per year until fiscal year 2009, when full-rate production is expected to begin at a rate of four per year. Air Force plans currently call for procurement of 51 RQ-4s. Northrop Grumman officials envision an eventual production of more than 200 Global Hawks, including 125 over the next decade. Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems was awarded two contracts in March totaling approximately $300 million to fund improvements in the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Global Hawk program.

The Navy has requested $152 million in the FY 2003 defense budget for two Global Hawks similar to the ACTD aircraft, and for a ground control station and a mission control element. The Navy Global Hawks are planned for delivery in FY 2004, and will be put through a rigorous testing program during FY 2005 through FY 2008 to define sensor suites and concepts of operations.

Northrop Grumman officials estimate that the Navy will have an eventual requirement for approximately 51 Global Hawks, eight of which would be dedicated to electronic intelligence collection. Initial operational capability (IOC) of the first units could be achieved by FY 2007, three to five years before the projected IOC of the Multimission Maritime Aircraft (MMA).

The Global Hawk, or a derivative of it, would be a candidate to fill the role of Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) system under a proposal put forth by Northrop Grumman as an adjunct of the (MMA) program. Use of the Global Hawk-equipped with electro-optical and infrared sensors and an electronic surveillance measures system and based at five current patrol-plane bases-could cover 3.5 million square miles in a 24-hour flight, relieving the Navy's over-- worked P-3 patrol aircraft fleet, and its MMA replacements, of large-area search responsibilities. Four Global Hawks-- each remaining on station for 24 hours-could provide continuous coverage of a search area with a radius of 3,400 nautical miles.

Northrop Grumman is proposing the Global Hawk for a variety of other military and civil missions, including cruise-- missile defense, ballistic-missile defense, communications relay, homeland security, drug-interdiction surveillance, weather reconnaissance, and forest-fire surveillance. Northrop Grumman is a member of the team led by Lockheed Martin that is bidding on the Coast Guard's Deepwater program, for which the company is proposing the acquisition of 14 Global Hawk aircraft. Foreign nations interested in the Global Hawk program include Australia and Germany.