The U.S. Department of Defense has contracted Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. for Global Hawk development, modernization, retrofit and sustainment activities for all Air Force Global Hawk variants.
Deal worth more than $4,8 billion provides for management, including program, business and technical areas; engineering efforts, including configuration management, data management, reliability, availability and maintainability, and related areas of concern.
“Additional, and more specific, guidance will be included within each individual delivery order/task order statement of work and performance work statement regarding these and other tasks,” the Department of Defense announced. “This contract provides flexibility to accommodate the broad enterprise of activities associated with the Global Hawk program.”
Per the contract, work will be performed in San Diego, California, and is expected to be completed Sept. 30, 2030.
As noted by Northrop Grumman, the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS) is the premier provider of persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information.
Able to fly at high altitudes for greater than 30 hours, Global Hawk is designed to gather near-real-time, high-resolution imagery of large areas of land in all types of weather – day or night. Beyond intelligence collection a portion of the Global Hawk fleet is engaged in supporting air and ground users with communications relay support. The EQ-4B Global Hawk carries the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) payload providing life-saving support to warfighters.
Global Hawk has amassed more than 250,000 flight hours with missions flown in support of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa, and the greater Asia-Pacific region. The system provides an affordable and flexible platform for multiple sensor payloads to be used together, delivering mission-critical information to various users around the world.
