The Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance remotely piloted aircraft received Milestone C approval from the Defense Acquisition Executive, a designation that allows the program to move forward with planned modernization activities and its updated acquisition strategy, according to a May 5 announcement from manufacturer Northrop Grumman. The Global Hawk received the designation after its software matured enough to demonstrate “operational interoperability” with other relevant systems. Northrop’s Global Hawk Program Director Mick Jaggers said the decision is a testament to the USAF and industry team’s efforts to support combat operations for over a decade, with various sensor payloads on the aircraft. In the future, Northrop anticipates flying additional payloads within size, weight, power, and communications specifications. Milestone C comes at the end of a program’s engineering and manufacturing development phase, which normally clears the way for the production and deployment phase. However, Global Hawk variants have flown more than 150,000 hours since 2001 in support of combat operations.
The use of a military counter-drone laser on the southwest border this week—which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas—will be a “case study” on the complex web of authorities needed to employ such weapons near civilian areas and the consequences of agencies…
