Forum: Drones

Is this thing real? Are there thoughts on arming Global Hawk? Will this thread get locked too?

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Why would it get locked?

They're looking into arming everything, including Shadow. What's next? Put 7.62mm rounds on a Raven?

Things certainly have changed if this is true. When I was on the Air Staff as a UAV Export Policy advisor, the CSAF stated on numerous occasions that the USAF would NEVER arm a Global Hawk. The biggest reason stated at that time would be the royal PITA getting permission to cross international borders with an armed UCAV.

Agreed.

Look at the U-2 program. A U-2 was shot down over the USSR, so NATO wouldn't allow funding/basing of the U-2 series "SPY" aircraft for some time. The solution of the whole problem was to call the aircraft TR-1 "Tactical Reconnaissance" whenever it was stationed in Europe, or when the US wanted some funding $$ from NATO.

They would fly around the US as a U-2, then when departing the US, the aircraft's records/forms would be changed to TR-1 so when it landed....

No more issues.... Rolling Eyes

Moral of the story; "Global Hawk" may not ever have weapons, but the "Global Kite", who knows? Shrug

Keep 'em flyin' Thumb

TEG

The AF's got one UAV with missiles, that should be plenty, Global Hawk is just an unmanned version of the U-2.

Model 396 as reported on Aviation Week is going to be a scaled down model of the Global Hawk able to drop 500lb bombs (JDAM): http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... 204top.xml

It wouldn't be a strategic asset like the current UAV, it could loiter and wait for a CAS mission.

I just looked at this thread and the advert after the first post was for a "UAV Predator R/C Airplane" isn't that the whole point of that particular system???

307

Well what are R/C airplanes, if not UAVs, eh? Wink

Quote:

Well what are R/C airplanes, if not UAVs, eh? Wink

Then they could have gotten away with saying, "own and fly your own Predator."
Even a 1:1 copy without the mission equipment could be available if you had that hobby and a few million extra dollars burning a hole in your pocket.

Yup. That's basically what it is, a small, cheaper, far less capable version of the Predator.

Personal opinion: no where does the article call it Global Hawk,... only that it "looks like a mini-Global Hawk".
If they decide to produce this, they will certainly "breed out" the laundry list of problems that are in the GH.

As for making it an attack platform,... GH has no Full Motion Video that I'm aware of. Seems like something it would need to become an "attack platform".

Huggy's right. GH won't be armed. We have other UAVs to do that job.

Regarding the U-2, it was never named, nor called within the military or CIA circles "Spy Plane". That was simply media horse sierra. The U-2 continued on and off in production well before Carter had the plane redesignated TR-1.

Forum: Drones

Global hawk model 396