The Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle has surpassed the 10,000 hour flying mark, clocking 10,500 hours as of late July—some 63 percent of them on combat missions. Making this accomplishment more outstanding is the fact that, until earlier this year when the first production models arrived in Southwest Asia, the Air Force had been flying development models in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
