The "RQ" designation is used for unarmed drones, such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk.
The aircraft is one of five aircraft acquired from the Air Force Global Hawk program.
Each Global Hawk has infra-red and radar sensors, and a surveillance range of 100 miles.
The Air Force this year canceled plans to replace the U-2 with an unmanned aircraft, the Global Hawk.
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Global Hawk's smaller cousin is the Predator, made by a former General Dynamics unit, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
UAVs like the global hawk demonstrate the benefits from continued smart investments in a strong national defense.
The drones used in the experimental flights were modified RQ-4 Global Hawk planes, which are generally used for surveillance.
Observers were particularly impressed when a Global Hawk flew from California to Australia in April and landed without human intervention.
The American Global Hawk, for instance, can loiter over a battlefield for a day at a height of more than 60, 000 feet.
The 1990s Global Hawk was the size of a small passenger jet.
Northrop Grumman bought Ryan Aeronautics, which developed Global Hawk, in 1999.
On Global Hawk, the twenty-five people with me were mostly maintenance.
Ed Walby of Northup's High Altitude Long Endurance Systems Enterprise recently told Secure Freedom Radio, the Global Hawk requires fewer personnel for maintenance and operations.
The Global Hawk can fly missions for up to 36 hours, three times the flying time of a U-2, due to the lifting of pilot restrictions.
The Predator, however, may be supplanted in any Gulf war by the Global Hawk, which can loiter for more than 24 hours at high altitude over a battlefield.
The basic RQ-4A Global Hawk UAV, manufactured for the U.S. Air Force by Northrop-Grumman, is the largest and most advanced drone in the U.S. military, according to the Navy.
The Air Force uses an array of aircraft, such as the U-2 spy plane, the high-altitude Global Hawk drone or satellites and systems that can gather intelligence from space.
These are five Global Hawk drones that provide the kind of surveillance capability that we saw in the Libya operation was so vital to the effective operation of our military.
Gortney said a surface-to-air missile threat would have to be eliminate before pilotless aircraft such as the Global Hawk drone could fly missions to see how successful the strikes have been.
The RQ-4A Global Hawk drone crashed during a routine training flight from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, according to Jamie Cosgrove, a spokeswoman for the Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons Program at the base.
Global Hawk can pick out objects as small as a truck with its synthetic aperture radar, which uses the plane's flight path to simulate the curve of a radar dish several hundred meters long.
In contrast to the Predator, which typically flies at an altitude of 15, 000 feet, the Global Hawk is a high-altitude aircraft capable of flying at 65, 000 feet, beyond the reach of any ground-based weapon.
UAVs are being used by the military increasingly in integrated operations for various missions, and theater commanders needing a broad overview and systematic target surveillance rely on the Global Hawk, recently profiled on Secure Freedom Radio.
Military surveillance aircraft scoured the battlefield -- from the lowest-flying aircraft such as the Army's Hunter and the Marines' Pioneer, to the Predator, to the higher-flying Global Hawk and U-2 -- and on up to the information-gathering satellites.
Eventually, the networking of forces will enable all units to possess a common picture of the battle area reflecting inputs from dozens of sources, including unmanned aerial vehicles like Global Hawk, spy satellites, and Special Forces on the ground.
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Northrop Grumman ( NOC - news - people ) makes an unmanned spy plane called Global Hawk, which can map and image huge areas quickly, but it is expensive, and expensive to fly, and can stay aloft for only a day or so.
It's not the miniature robotic space shuttle that NASA's planning to send into orbit this month, but another of the space agency's unmanned vehicles has edged closer to its beginning its mission, with the "nearly autonomous" Global Hawk aircraft having completed a key test flight bright and early on April 2nd.
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