Northrop Grumman Launches Dedicated Global Hawk Support Website

Northrop Grumman has established a Global Hawk Support Website where pertinent information about the Global Hawk (and related platforms) is provided.

NGC uses the new website to put their case against the USAF decision to terminate Block 30 Global Hawk:

• Global Hawks fly 3-4 times longer missions and farther than the U-2. Global Hawk has been the first on scene for every disaster or conflict in the last 10 years
• Soldiers survive in Afghanistan every day due to a Global Hawk watching overhead, since October 2001
• Over half the armor destroyed in the Iraq Air War was discovered, identified and targeted with imagery from Global Hawk – without it, our ground forces would have seen more fighting
• Without Global Hawk in Libya, Khadafi and half of his army would have escaped – AFRICOM success in the air operations would have been limited without imagery and MTI from a Block 30. Global Hawk “Shrinks Africa”
• Global Hawk showed our Navy where to land helicopters to reach refugees in Haiti, with a mission flown from California
• The Japanese found stranded survivors based on continuous Global Hawk imagery from Block 30s flown from Guam

Sometimes the U-2 arrived a couple of weeks after a crisis, after forward deploying to a base close by. With Global Hawk, our military gets persistent intelligence everywhere, anytime, with a flight to any crisis in the world as soon as a Global Hawk Block 30 can get there, at 320 knots. No forward deployment, no pilots at risk, and it carries excellent Electro-optical, SAR and SIGINT capability simultaneously. Before a U-2 mission flies, the Intel Community must decide whether to use a radar or EO – it cannot carry both. If the USAF really needs the sensor capability on the U-2, those sensors will easily fit on a Global Hawk.

Source: Northrop Grumman