Air Force testers at Edwards AFB, Calif., have been checking out air vehicle N-1, the Navy’s first RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle, until the Navy could get its own launch and recovery system set up at NAS Patuxent River, Md. The N-1 took off from Edwards last week on its way to its new home, where it will take part in the Navy’s Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration for Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 2006. The Navy commanded the 10-hour flight of N-1 to Maryland from Pax River.
The future U.S. bomber force could provide a way for the Pentagon to simultaneously deter conflict with peer adversaries in two geographically disparate theaters, said Mark Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a March 21 event. But doing so…