Northrop's Global Hawk lags U-2: US Air Force

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - The most widely deployed version of Northrop Grumman Corp's Global Hawk long-range reconnaissance drone lags the Cold War-vintage U-2 in terms of certain key capabilities, the Air Force's top general said Friday.

'In many respects, the Global Hawk Block 30 system is not as capable from a sensor point of view, as is the U-2,' General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told a Pentagon news briefing.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that the Pentagon, as part of its fiscal 2013 budget request to be sent to Congress Feb. 13, would seek to scrap the Block 30 Global Hawk because projected operational savings over the U-2 had not materialized. The Air Force plans to buy instead the next-generation Block 40 Global Hawk. The U.S. Congress will have the final say.

The U-2, built by Lockheed Martin Corp, began service in the late 1950s. The current U-2S model is 40 percent larger and carries four times the intelligence collection payload, Lockheed Martin says on its web site.

Northrop Grumman said in a statement after Panetta spoke on Thursday that the Global Hawk was the 'modern solution' to surveillance.

'In contrast, the aging U-2 program, first introduced in the 1950s, places pilots in danger, has limited flight duration, and provides limited sensor capacity,' Randy Belote, a Northrop spokesman, said in the statement.

The Air Force had planned to buy a total of 31 Global Hawk Block 30 aircraft for a total of about $2 billion. Fourteen have been delivered and have been used to gather intelligence over Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as for humanitarian operations after natural disasters in Japan and Haiti. The Air Force also flies an earlier generation Global Hawk.

Schwartz said the bottom line was that the difference between the Global Hawk Block 30 and the U-2 was not great enough to retain both for the same mission.

The Navy is still planning to buy a version of the Global Hawk known as Broad Area Maritime Surveillance. The experience with the Block 30 model also would help a model that NATO plans to buy, the Pentagon said in a budget-related handout on Thursday.

The planes sell for about $30 million each, not including sensors and ground stations.

Remotely piloted Global Hawk surveillance planes fly at 60,000 feet and may stay aloft for more than 24 hours. Raytheon Co's optical, infrared and radar sensors let the planes scan large swaths of terrain and transmit images in near real-time.

Global Hawk had been expected to replace the U-2 spy plane in 2015.

The United States has discussed possible Global Hawk sales with South Korea, Australia, Japan and Singapore. Any such exports would require a waiver of the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary arms control pact created in 1987.

In addition to its use as a spy plane, Global Hawk was used over Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, flying from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. It has also been used to track forest fires in California.

Schwartz said he expected the Global Hawk Block 30 aircraft to be placed in storage 'for future possibilities, whatever they may be.'

(Reporting By Jim Wolf; Editing by Tim Dobbyn) Keywords: USA DEFENSE/DRONE

(jim.wolf@thomsonreuters.com)(+1 202 898 8402)

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