The Air Force has tasked Northrop Grumman to outfit two of the RQ-4 Global Hawk block 20 unmanned aerial vehicles that the company has built for the service with the communications-relay technology known as BACN to meet a joint urgent operational need in Southwest Asia for greater troop connectivity. “It’s the number one priority in the [Global Hawk] program now to convert those two airplanes,” Tom Twomey, business development director for Northrop’s high-altitude, long-endurance systems, told reporters during the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in Washington D.C., Tuesday. BACN, which stands for battlefield airborne communications node, relays voice communication over long distances and bridges frequencies, thereby allowing ground forces on frequency-limited radios to talk with close air support aircraft. The Air Force has said it would like these Global Hawks ready to deploy in combat with BACN in Fiscal 2011.
Desert Storm Memorial Misses Its Target
Nov. 12, 2026
The time has come to honor the men and women who fought in Operation Desert Storm with a memorial in Washington, D.C. the approved design is an ode to the final stage of that conflict, the last 100 hours of a 1,000-hour fight. And while artfully executed, this landscaped left…