The Global Hawk has provided high-altitude, long-endurance ISR for the Air Force since the late 1990s, but the service says it no longer needs the unmanned aircraft. (Air Force)
Global Hawk: The Drone The Pentagon Couldn’t Ground -- McClatchy News/Center for Public Integrity
WASHINGTON — With billions of dollars in spending reductions looming, Air Force officials looked around last year for a program they could cut that was underperforming, had busted its budget and wasn’t vital to immediate combat needs.
Eventually, they settled on the production line for a $223 million aircraft known as the Global Hawk, with the wingspan of a tanker but no pilot in the cockpit, built to fly over vast terrain for a little more than a day while sending back data to military commanders on the ground.
“The Block 30 (version of Global Hawk) is not operationally effective,” the Pentagon’s top testing official had declared in a blunt 2011 report about the drones being assembled by Northrop Grumman in Palmdale, Calif. Canceling its production and putting recently built models into long-term storage would save $2.5 billion over five years, the service projected. Its missions could be picked up by an Air Force stalwart, the U-2 spy plane, which had room for more sensors and could fly higher.
Read more ....
Update #1: The battle over Global Hawk -- Navy Times
Update #2: The Drone That Wouldn't Die: How a Defense Contractor Bested the Pentagon -- The Atlantic
Update #3: Thanks to lobby effort, flawed drone still flying despite Pentagon, White House objections -- RT
My Comment: A sobering education on how politics and influence works in Washington.
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