Northrop Grumman has proposed the use of its RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle for the U.S. Air Force to bridge a communications gap between the F-35 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor aircraft platforms, Defense News reported. The report said the service branch’s F-35 and F-22 planes currently are unable to exchange information because the former uses the […] More

Raytheon has received a potential $25.9 million contract to modify the Enhanced Integrated Sensor Suite and retrofit the Enhanced Electro-Optical Receiver Unit on the U.S. Air Force‘s Global Hawk unmanned aircraft systems. The Defense Department said Friday the company will also provide non-recurring engineering and retrofitting support for EISS upgrades to Global Hawk Block 30 UAS. Work under the contract […] More

A United Technologies Corp. subsidiary has concluded the initial test flight of its multi-spectral imaging sensor aboard the Northrop Grumman-built RQ-4B Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. Kevin Raftery, vice president of ISR and space systems at UTC Aerospace Systems, said in a statement published Wednesday the first flight test sought to demonstrate the capability of the UTC […] More

Northrop Grumman has pushed back the test flight of its RQ-4 Global Hawk  unmanned surveillance aircraft equipped with a United Technologies Corp.-built multispectral imaging sensor technology to late January, Inside Defense reported Wednesday. Rachel Karas writes testing of the MS-177 sensor-equipped Global Hawk was originally scheduled to occur in late December. The report said Northrop postponed all the company’s test […] More

The U.S. Air Force has partnered with Rolls-Royce to unveil a 14,500-square-foot facility at Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex on Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma designed to accommodate repair, maintenance and overhaul work on the F-137 engine. F-137 is an 8,000-pound Rolls-Royce-made turbofan engine that works to power the Northrop Grumman-built RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle, […] More

Rolls-Royce and the U.S. Air Force have established a maintenance facility for the service branch’s Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma as part of a public-private partnership. The new depot in Tinker AFB’s Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex will be used to repair and overhaul engines of the Global Hawk fleet through a mix of […] More

Northrop Grumman has flown a legacy U.S. Air Force sensor for the first time on a company-built RQ-4 Global Hawk drone as part of efforts to demonstrate sensors that are previously unavailable to the unmanned aerial vehicle. The Optical Bar Camera test marks the second of three planned demonstrations of the technology, Northrop said Wednesday. The broad-area sensor is designed to transmit panoramic […] More

The U.S. Air Force has awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman for modernization work on a ground segment the service branch uses to control Global Hawk autonomous unmanned aircraft systems. Northrop said Monday the work will include a modular and scalable cockpit architecture, as well as an updated command and control capacity across all missions and sensors. “Global Hawk […] More

The Northrop Grumman-built Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system has logged 200,000 flight hours. The company said Tuesday Global Hawks operated by the U.S. Air Force recorded 88 percent of the total flight hours while UAVs run by NASA, U.S. Navy and Germany logged the remaining flight hours. “This milestone is especially meaningful as it comes just […] More

Northrop Grumman has worked with the U.S. Air Force‘s Life Cycle Management Center and Air Combat Command to develop an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payload adapter for the Block 30 RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system. The parties built the IPA technology under a cooperative research-and-development agreement as part of efforts to link existing and future data-gathering sensors with the RQ-4 drone’s airframe system, the […] More

Northrop Grumman has received component parts from Korea Jig and Fixture and Firstec for integration with South Korea’s RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial system. Northrop said Thursday it received deliveries of KJF-built aerospace-grade machine parts after Firstec handed the wire harnesses designed to transmit electrical signals for the UAS early this year. Firstec and KJF started producing […] More

Gaithersburg, Md.-based UltiSat has secured a $9,369,756 task order contract with options from the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide Ku bandwidth capacity for a U.S. military organization based at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The company will support Global Hawk unmanned air vehicle flight tests along with its Ku-band earth terminals associated with a mission […] More