A consortium of scientists are in the early stages of preparation for a multi-year airborne science campaign to study the humidity and chemical composition of air entering the tropical tropopause layer of the atmosphere between eight and 11 miles (13 to 18 km) high. NASA’s Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment, or ATTREX, will conduct this research over the Pacific Ocean...
The growth variant of the AE 3007H engine for UAVs from Rolls Royce has cleared the flight tests conducted by the US Air Force. These flight tests are entirely funded by the US Air Force. The new engine has been specifically designed to improve the performance of the RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV with enhanced toughness and cost reductions. Particularly...
Raytheon has won a $24.7 million Global Hawk Ground Station sustainment Contract. Raytheon Company said in a statement that it has been awarded a one-year subcontract worth$24.7 million for support services of the ground station elements of the RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft system. David Wilson, Defense and Civil Mission Solutions director Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems...
By Amy Butler, Aviation Week U.S. Air Force testers say the Global Hawk Block 20/30 unmanned aerial system (UAS) is unable to completely and reliably perform the high-altitude imagery and signals intelligence collection missions for which it is designed. Maj. Gen. David Eichorn, who heads the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center in New Mexico, says he found...
Robots will be used to help solve the problem of autonomous engagement for in-flight refuelling. This new research could pave the way for civil or military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flights to last days or even weeks. A relative motion robotics centre of excellence will open at the University of Bristol to research and develop an autonomous engagement solution...
A Northrop Grumman -produced Global Hawk high altitude unmanned aircraft began a series of flights over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 11 as part of a campaign to study atmospheric rivers. Known as Winter Storms and Pacific Atmospheric Rivers (WISPAR), the research is being done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to improve winter storm forecasts. The purpose of the WISPAR...
The Manichai Daily news reports that the Japanese government has in its possession video footage of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant taken by a U.S. military reconnaissance drone, but has yet to release the footage to the public, sources have revealed. The footage taken from an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone was passed on to the Japanese government...
The Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude jet-powered UAV completed its operational test flights in December, a senior Air Force official said. Analysts are currently poring though data gathered during the initial operational test and evaluation flights, and a final report is due to Air Combat Command in March, the officer said in an e-mail on Tuesday. The Global...
Bill Brewin from the nextgov site writes:- The Navy did not validate invoices worth $329.3 million that Northrop Grumman Corp. submitted for development of a remotely piloted aircraft the service will use to conduct high-altitude ocean reconnaissance, the Defense Department inspector general said in a report issued on Dec. 23. Northrop Grumman won the Navy’s $1.2 billion Broad Area...
The Defense Ministry has decided to begin full-scale research from fiscal 2011 into whether unmanned aerial vehicles should be introduced for surveillance of China and North Korea, government sources said. The ministry will send senior Self-Defense Forces officers to study how the U.S. military uses and maintains the state-of-the-art high-altitude Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, the sources said. The...
