Last fall I found myself in a “spirited” debate with a few of my colleagues about how UAVs would integrate into the Navy’s carrier operations environment (this is what happens when a bunch of ex-naval aviators get together and prognosticate about the future…but I digress). The crux of the discussion was around who would do the majority of adapting: UAVs or the supporting elements onboard the carrier?

CVW-17 LSOs onboard USS John F. Kennedy in 2004

As an example, during normal operations LSOs (Landing Signals Officers) are stationed at the aft end of the carrier to ensure the safe and expeditious recovery of all aircraft. They are entrusted by the ship and airwing commanders to help pilots land and, when necessary, visually and verbally communicate signals for pilots to “wave off” and try the landing again. Check out this video of a carrier landing on the flight deck.

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In a similar manner, the deck crews taxi the aircraft around to its final shutdown position using a series of hand and light signals in what can only be described as a chaotic ballet. The video below shows the operations aboard a carrier deck.

With the introduction of UAVs into the carrier environment, LSOs, deck crews, and others will have an interesting challenge of safeguarding operations without comprising them. Researchers at MIT are working on a series of exciting experiments to address this issue.

In short, the researchers are “training” UAV sensors to recognize the intricate hand signals and motions that are commonplace on the carrier deck. For example, there are specific motions to taxi forward, right, left, apply brakes, etc. These standardized motions allow the deck crews to “drive” the aircraft into certain positions, often times moving the nosewheel to within inches (yes, inches) of the carrier deck.

"Shooter" giving the signal to launch an F/A-18C off the catapult

Although the technology is nascent, the idea is spot on. Other options include hooking up directly to a UAV and taxiing it around with a joystick (to the elation of all those X-Box players out there) or taxiing via remote control from Vulture’s Row, perhaps.

In terms of landing UAVs on the carrier, the days of LSOs using hand signals is long gone. However, LSOs will continue to have the authority to ensure a clear deck by maintaining wave-off command over UAVs via electronic signals. In other words, if the LSO does not give a green light or if he hits the “pickle” because the deck becomes foul, a signal will be sent to the UAV that will cause it to immediately execute a wave-off and return into the landing pattern for another go-around.

Much work has yet to be done, but the good news is that the best and brightest in the world are beginning to develop innovative solutions.

Fly safe,

Marc

Many times over the past several years, I have reflected on the subject of change and how to better facilitate the process of change in the course of my work in airspace modernization.  It’s a fact that change is a part of life – it is central to the human experience.  You would think that we would get enough practice at some point in our lives that we would become more receptive to it.  In fact, it has been my observation and personal experience that just the opposite is true.  We get comfortable with what’s familiar and often become more resistant to change with age and tenure.  We like the status quo and resist changes even when there are obvious and compelling reasons to move in a new direction.  How many times have we all heard, or even said ourselves, “Remember the days when…”, or “Those were the good old days…”?   The human tendency is to resist change and protect our “turf”.  Humans and the organizational institutions we create have adapted clever mechanisms to maintain the status quo and one of our very best staus quo “preservation” mechanisms is to restrict information and minimize visibility to outsiders. 

Late in his life, Socrates was placed on trial for heresy.  His crime?  He had encouraged his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves.  His response to the court when faced with the choice of execution or change was his famous words, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I’ve reflected on Socrates’ words many times as I’ve considered how to live my life over the years.  In fact, his words were on my mind as I had the opportunity last June to accept an invitation to address the CEOs of the world’s Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) in Bangkok at CANSO’s AGM conference.  The leadership of CANSO had asked me to be “provocative” in bringing a message that would challenge ANSPs to think beyond the “status quo”.  I was particularly intrigued with this request as the challenges for this industry are so great, and the solutions appear to be quite complex.

ANSPs are responsible for managing airspace operations with air traffic operations management and navigation infrastructure.  They are deeply involved in the process of upgrading airspace and face some significant challenges in doing so.  Some of these challenges are internal to their organizations.  Most are not organized to be fast moving with change -in fact, they are intentionally organized to ensure that any changes are considered with great caution.  Most are owned, either in whole or in part, by a state organization that is primarily concerned with safety, reliable service and security.  When it comes to necessary changes in arrival and departure patterns, external challenges include significant local and state political elements which make it very difficult to get support for any airspace considerations that are perceived to create “new noise”.  At the same time, airlines are feeling pain from increasing and unpredictable fuel costs.  They want airspace improvements that reduce costs and allow increased utilization of their new, high performance aircraft, yet they don’t want to see airspace charges or taxes increase. 

If things weren’t difficult enough for ANSPs, I introduced a new challenge for them to consider.  We see significant changes around us in this age of increasing information, particularly with Internet access and social media.  In my current role with GE, I am becoming well acquainted with Twitter, LinkedIn, various industry weblogs and internet websites.  The expanding availability of information is amazing and it is having its effect on increasing visibility across every human endeavor.  For the most part, though, I would say that this new world of increased access to information has not really intersected the business of airspace management.  I predicted for the audience that this was about to change and offered some early examples as precursors of what’s to come.  An increasing number of hobbyists, private and commercial entities around the world have installed passive transponder or ADS-B receivers to observe, collect and archive information about aircraft flights.  In fact, many of us have smart phone and tablet applications that provide an incredible amount of detail on how aircraft are arriving and departing airports across the globe.  This information is only recently available to the public and can only get more and more refined with associated applications for various interests.

I offered the possibility of a future where a constellation of low-earth orbit satellites are equipped with these passive transponder and ADS-B receivers that collect aircraft information over the entire globe and archive the track histories.  A global aggregated database of aircraft track histories has great commercial value and will feed an increasingly information-hungry population of global citizens.  Certainly this will give greater visibility into our world of airspace operations and provide a means for anyone with interest to measure and analyze the performance of airspace operations anywhere in the world. 

I told the CEOs that they should expect more website postings by community citizens and hobbyists who provide increasingly more detailed data and analysis on relative efficiencies at both the aircraft-by-aircraft level and the overall system level.  This increased visibility and external analysis will be accompanied by pointed questions like, “Why are there air traffic delays when there are so few aircraft in the air at any given time?”, “Why are these aircraft flying over my house instead of xyz?”, and “Do you realize how much more fuel is being burned and emissions are being generated above what our analysis shows would be possible?”

Since this talk was given last June, Iridium has announced plans to include ADS-B receivers on their next-generation low-earth orbit satellites.  There is a very real possibility that in the next decade, real-time aircraft surveillance will be available for the entire globe.  Beyond the operational opportunities, there will be the commercial information market opportunity I mentioned previously.

So, what to do?

 …..to be continued

In my last post, I talked about the effect of PB13 on several of the Department of Defense’s top UAV platforms. One program that remains a key DoD priority (and thus will continue to receive ample funding) is the Navy’s UCLASS (Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike) program. The current competition includes a potential clean-sheet offering from Boeing, a carrier-based variant of the General Atomics Avenger, a possible derivative of the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, and the Northrop Grumman X-47B UCAS-D (i.e., the Navy’s UCLASS demonstration platform).

On August 11^th, 2011, the Pentagon’s acquisition executive, Sean Stackley, approved the Navy’s request to admit the UCLASS program into the preliminary phase of the procurement system, granting the program a material development decision to proceed with an analysis of alternatives and related studies. More recently, Naval Air Systems Command formally advised industry that within a month it may release a competitive broad agency announcement “for additional studies” of the UCLASS concept. All extremely positive signs for continue progress.

This fiscal year, the Navy plans to “complete milestone preparation activities” and “initiate design and development of the UCLASS system,” according to the budget documents. The Navy’s five-year, $2.3 billion development funding plan for the UCLASS program, according to service budget documents, includes $122.4 million in FY13, $144.1 million in FY14, $674.1 million in FY15, $777.6 million in FY16, and $611.2 million in FY17. In other words, the money is there for UCLASS.

It seems that UCLASS is even finding its way into somewhat “adjacent” conversations, including those that involve F/A-XX, the Navy’s future replacement for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Yes, even those discussions are beginning to occur.

In written testimony submitted prior to the House Appropriations defense subcommittee’s March 1^st hearing on the Navy budget, Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, acknowledged that the Navy will need to replace its Super Hornet fleet in the far term, and initial activities “are underway to define the follow-on F/A-XX aircraft”. The Navy won’t necessarily design a new aircraft to fill that role, and the service won’t be limited to considering just one platform, Mabus said. “Options include additional F-35s, a variant of UCLASS, a new manned/unmanned platform, or some combination of these.” Mabus said the Navy has no plans of abandoning development of the UCLASS platform despite the austere fiscal environment.

Now, to be fair we are WAY early on F/A-XX speculation. What’s important to note, however, is the repeated emphasis the Navy and DoD leadership are placing on UCLASS. Programs such as this will continue to be critical enablers for the military’s strategic shift towards Asia-Pacific. This is just the start.

Fly safe,

Marc

In my previous blog from Oshkosh, I talked about Sikorsky’s ambitious Firefly project, an all-electric helicopter powered by batteries. Sikorsky had planned for first flight sometime in 2012, but apparently someone has beaten them to the punch! Pascal Chretien, a French electrical/aerospace engineer and helicopter pilot, has designed and built a fully electric coaxial rotor helicopter by himself (almost) and took his machine into the air for a two minute flight.

The challenges for electric fixed-wing flight are well documented, and they are even greater for electric rotary-wing flight. For a fixed-wing aircraft, it will only require max power during takeoff, but once in flight, the power requirement is reduced. On the other hand, a helicopter requires high power throughout its flight profile, so it will require a tremendous amount of energy to stay in the air.

For Pascal, he had to design a helicopter with minimum weight, so he had to adopt a different configuration than the standard single main rotor. He picked the coaxial design so all the power is going toward lifting the vehicle off the ground, versus a 90:10 split with the conventional helicopter. Instead of cyclic for directional control, he uses a weight shifting system. This design is particularly dangerous for two reasons. The first reason is that you are shifting the C.G. of the vehicle, which could be catastrophic if the weight is shifted beyond design envelope. The second reason is that the control is now backwards compared to the regular cyclic.

As a throwback, perhaps homage, to the early aviation pioneers, Pascal did not recruit a test pilot to fly his contraption. Instead, he took it to the air himself. So far the flight testing has been limited to within ground effect while he makes final tweaks. Eventually, Pascal and his sponsor, Solution F, is targeting 10 to 12 minute flight time, which is similar to the Firefly.

On February 23, 2012, I was aboard LAN Airlines flight 2022, which inaugurated Latin America’s first continuously guided flight from takeoff to landing using Performance-based Navigation (PBN) technology.  GE supported the Green Skies of Peru project, a collaborative effort among LAN, Peru’s air navigation service provider CORPAC and regulator DGAC, by helping to provide aircraft flying from Cusco to Lima a highly efficient, predictable flight path from liftoff of runway 10 in Cusco to touchdown on Lima’s runway 15.

The Green Skies of Peru project is a notable milestone in the global effort to modernize today’s obsolete airspace infrastructure to match the capabilities of today’s modern aircraft systems. Deploying a continuous PBN city pair flight path creates additional predictability and continuity throughout the entire flight, compared to a single PBN arrival or departure path, while solving operational challenges at the individual airports.

The GE-designed PBN departure, en-route, arrival and approach procedures will save participating airlines on average 19 track miles, 6.3 minutes (7 minutes actual), 450 pounds of fuel and 1,420 pounds of CO₂ emissions per flight. The new flight paths also enable increased capacity at Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport – a major hub in Latin America – while helping to reduce the carbon footprint at Cusco, the access point to the popular tourist destination Machu Picchu. LAN flies the route 11-17 times a day, depending on the season.

With the success of this demonstration flight, a formal trial will commence allowing the team to validate the benefits and the paths under various operating conditions and finalize the deployment plan.

In 2009, GE, in collaboration with IATA, designed and deployed Required Navigation Performance (RNP) approach procedures for LAN at Cusco to improve access into the airport that is flanked by the Andes Mountains. Prior to the RNP paths, it was typical for one or more of LAN’s 15-21 scheduled flights per day into Cusco to be delayed or diverted due to poor weather and low visibility. Since the RNP paths have been in use at Cusco, LAN has reduced cancellations from twelve to five, flight delays by 45% and un-stabilized approaches by 94%, per month on average. During the first year of RNP use at Cusco, more than 30,000 of LAN Peru´s passengers avoided flight cancellations or delays, thanks to the technology. With the success of the Cusco paths, LAN selected GE Aviation in 2010 to develop an RNP program at five other airports it serves, including Lima. 

I went to Peru to participate in and witness this historic event, the inaugural flight.  What I wasn’t expecting, was the amazing level of passion and enthusiasm at the personal level among the LAN personnel in particular.  It was more than what you’d see or expect in a business transaction or any mere technical demonstration.  At the reception following the flight, many speakers, beginning with the CEO of LAN, expressed their genuine excitement and enthusiasm over the transformation of their flying operations, and how those benefits translate into advantages for the people and environment of Peru.

It took me back to those enthusiastic days at Alaska Airlines 20 years ago.  I was 29 when I first started the work on the Juneau RNP project. And I celebrated my 49^th birthday just a day prior to the flight in Peru.  I had not thought of it this way before, but in a way I realized – spreading RNP around the globe has been my life’s work. 

I want to share part of a speech given at the reception by Captain Christian Staiger of LAN Airlines.  It captures for me the emotion of the day and paints a picture of what RNP does.

“People say that when a man lifts his feet off the ground, he shares his history with the rest of the world. Borders can’t be drawn on the sky, and we the aviators, have replaced them with a friendly greeting of welcome and farewell through our modern communications systems each time we cross a frontier.

When the sun god Inti decides to shine on our crops, it never asks who the growing wheat belongs to.  Migrating birds only look for warmth and a proper place to settle down their nests.  Navigators through history have always observed stars to plot their positions on the maps. Today some modern stars with precise electronic timepieces on board orbit our planet and can be observed from every corner on earth, day and night, on clear or clouded skies, available for every airplane with the proper equipment on board….

The flight has been perfect.  The shortest route possible is the one that has been flown.  The precision of the navigators is such that the maximum error is limited to the distance of a wingspan.  From this flight on, variance and dispersion can be eliminated.  If you allow my analogy, we can say that a straight railway line has been traced between these cities that can be used by all appropriate modern aircraft.

Today’s historic milestone has many passports.  We have chosen the sky that covers the land of Peru, to honor our sincere engagement with the environment.  The flight Cusco-Lima joins not only our aeronautical histories under a common brotherhood; it also does it with the histories of all cultures that have inhabited these lands.  The wisdom of our common Inca ancestors in dialog with scientific knowledge of present days.”

You can watch a demonstration of Green Skies of Peru here.

Click here to see photos.

Now that the dust has settled from last week’s release of PB13, it’s time to stake stock of the impact on the DoD’s plans for UAVs. As I mentioned in my previous blog, even before PB13 was released we knew the Air Force had made the decision to terminate procurement of block 30 Global Hawks in favor of the manned U-2 Dragon Lady and subsequent procurement of block 40 Global Hawks. Nothing new to report there, although we can certainly expect Northrop Grumman to continue to press the DoD for an alternative solution. So, here is the UAV breakdown for each of the services. Bean counters of the world, enjoy…

By and large the Air Force took the biggest hit last week. In addition to the aforementioned block 30 Global Hawk termination, the Reaper fleet will see substantial reductions, as the DoD decided to extend the service life of MQ-1B Predators. Also, the Air Force just announced that it has no intention of moving forward in the near term with MQ-X, the Reaper replacement program that was set to come online in FY17. Check out this article to read more and this photo to see an MQ-9A Reaper.

The Navy also did not escape completely unscathed. MRMUAS (Medium-Range Maritime Unmanned Aerial System) was canceled in lieu of the successful RQ-8B Fire Scout and its larger, more capable brother, the MQ-8C Fire Scout – click here to read more. Overall procurement for Fire Scout through FY16 is down compared to PB12 plans, but the Navy seems fully committed to long-term utilization of the platform. Similarly, BAMS will also see less procurement through FY16. See a photo of an MQ-8C Fire Scout here.

The story for the Army is slightly different. Although procurement is down overall for FY13, the numbers are well ahead of PB12 plans through FY16. The vast majority of that difference stems from increased purchases of the RQ-11B Raven. No Army UAV programs have been outwardly canceled as of yet, though it will be interesting to see what happens now that MRMUAS is no longer. The Army was essentially leveraging it as an AoA for a VTOL UAV. Check out this article to read more and this photo to see a RQ-11B Raven.

All in all, some winners and losers in terms of PB13 plans for UAVs. One program of note, UCLASS, remains a key focal point not only for the Navy, but also for the Air Force – click here to read more. Essentially, the Air Force will watch how UCLASS unfolds and then decide upon a follow strategy for UCAVs. Of course, this assumes only non-proprietary programs. Any programs and platforms in the classified world are…well… classified. See a photo of an X-47B UCAS-D Fire Scout here.

Fly safe,

Marc

Over the past couple of years we have witnessed one of aviation’s inescapable realities: its fortunes are clearly tied to the world economy… and it hasn’t been pretty. Business and General Aviation appears to have been hit particularly hard: I will always contend that the amount of productivity that bizjets, turboprops and piston aircraft generate is substantial and that use of these tools has often been mischaracterized as opulent. Yet, the lift that could have been generated by the introduction of new technologies doesn’t appear to have compensated for the downwards pull of macroeconomic gravity… with some notable exceptions and first among them is China.

China’s surge in prominence is significant in two ways. First (the obvious), it provides a new sales opportunities for airframers seeking to offset lower demand in North America and Europe. With GDP growth projected to stabilize in the vicinity of 8% annually, it is not hard to see the allure of China.

Second (the not-so-obvious), China’s surge in importance is paradoxically contrasted with an infrastructure that is lacking on several fronts. Not only is the number of airports inadequate to support the economy, particularly in its hinterland, but even the existing ones lack a solid MRO and FBO network. For a country whose current bizjet installed base barely broke the 100 count recently (yes, no missing zeros), the lack of an adequate support system would appear to be a substantial hindrance to adoption rates.

Yet, analysts appear to be in agreement that an installed base of 1000+ in China within a decade is within reach. The answer, as readers may have guessed, lies in the Chinese government’s intent to bridge the gap with a solid infusion of construction projects and decreased airspace regulation. China’s 12^th Five-Year plan specifically contains the following provisions:

“[…] promote the development of general-purpose aviation, reform the airspace management mechanism, and improve the efficiency of utilization of airspace resources. […]”

For those of us who are not proficient enough in Chinese to read the text in its original form, a number of sites such as this one offer a useful English translation.

If recent efforts by the government to continue fueling its economic growth and maintain the country’s prominence on the world stage are any indications, there should be no doubt that they will succeed and that airframers’ trust in bluer skies ahead are well placed.

The upcoming ABACE tradeshow in Shanghai at the end of March will be a good barometer: it promises to be better-bigger-bolder. The industry’s eyes will certainly be pointed eastward next month.

Back on June 30, 2011, DLR of Germany demonstrated electric taxiing using a novel fuel cell-powered electric landing gear (press release here and video link here). The premise of electric taxiing is to postpone engine start and using it as the source for propulsion and electricity while the airplane is still on the ground, turning the engine on once the aircraft is ready to take off. By doing so, this would help reduce fuel consumption and wear on the engine while the aircraft is sitting in queue waiting to takeoff, and now days the queue seems to get longer and longer.

This concept sounds great at first glance, but let’s dig a bit deeper. Fuel burn savings during taxi are really dependent on the proportion of time spent on ground taxi relative to the entire mission. For example, a 737 flight involves around 20% of its mission time on ground taxiing, while a 777 flight involves only 6%. Therefore, electric taxiing creates more value for a 737 versus 777 because the fuel consumption reduction due to electric taxi is greater on a 737 (~16%) than a 777 (~5%). The savings is not 20% for 737 because you still have to burn some fuel to power the electric motors, either through an APU or in the future, a fuel cell.

While ~16% savings is pretty significant, there are tradeoffs to consider. To start, one will have to offset the gain with the added complexity and weight of adding motors and related controls robust enough to handle the rigorous landing environment. Also, aircraft engines need to warm up prior to takeoff, depending on ambient temperature and whether it is the first flight of the day, so the real savings might be less than the 16%.

Are there other ways to achieve the same results? What about using ground tugs to tow aircraft to the runway? What do you think?

Just before Christmas I was in China for my 44^th visit since helping to launch RNP operations in China beginning with the Air China Boeing 757 in Lhasa in November of 2004.  Click here to see a photo. The occasion for this visit was to kick off our brand new training course, “PBN 201: Integrating PBN into Air Traffic Management”.  PBN technology is endorsed by international organizations and regulatory agencies globally and is recognized as the enabler of more consistent and efficient operations at remote and busy terminal environments.  In consideration of these benefits, the global expansion of Performance-based Navigation (PBN) is continuing to increase.  A number of countries have done a remarkable job preparing PBN deployment plans and with trial deployments to gain experience and validate results for stakeholders.  These same countries are then moving rapidly toward broad deployment with the idea of multiplying the benefits at an exponential rate through a network deployment of PBN infrastructure across the country.  With expansion of PBN procedures at mid to high traffic airports, transformations in air traffic management concepts and techniques are needed to address a mixture of PBN and traditional operations.

China is an excellent example of a country that is remarkable in their PBN plans and progress with deployment, particularly with RNP.  The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and Air China had their first introduction to PBN during a visit to Boeing in the early part of the last decade.  During that visit, they had a briefing on the aircraft capability and a simulator demonstration of the RNP operation in Juneau that had been pioneered by Alaska Airlines in the mid-1990’s.  That introduction to RNP led to the launch of their first RNP deployment in Lhasa, Tibet which went into service with an Air China 757 in May 2006.  Success led to success and today there are over a dozen airports equipped with RNP procedures flown by all four of the major airlines in China and an increasing number of regional operators.

There is one common theme for all of the RNP deployments at China airports to date, and that is to reduce the risk of operations at some of the most challenges airports in the world.  The majority of the work has been in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province, and Sichuan Province.  In most of this region, the average terrain elevations are 15,000’ and current RNP operations ensure predictable, reliable airline operations to airports in Tibet like Bangda with an elevation of 14,200’ and Ali, with an elevation just over 14,000’.  With these extreme airport environments, the China RNP deployment strategy is understandable.  Other countries that are actively deploying RNP have also focused on high-risk airports as a first step in deployment.  What we have seen in other countries however, is a transition very quickly to an RNP deployment schedule that focuses on air traffic operational efficiency. 

Being at the forefront of the global PBN transformation, GE is focused on developing and delivering air traffic management solutions that improve aircraft operations and the air traffic control workload.  The PBN 201 course was created to address the need for ATM transformation associated with wide implementations and to help participants understand what’s required for successful PBN integration in a wide-variety of environments, including busy terminal areas.

The PBN 201 course builds on the real-world example of the pioneering work of the Brisbane Green RNP Project and highlights the results of this trial in an environment of medium density traffic with various levels of aircraft capability.  Details on practical integration of PBN into the ATM system, including technical training requirements, project management and existing regulatory and guidance material was covered in the course. 

We had a lot of positive feedback from the participants in the course and we expect to offer the course again in the future as part of our effort to support the deployment of PBN infrastructure in the various world regions.

In a stunning turn of events, the USAF announced it is seriously considering terminating the Global Hawk program in favor of extending the service life of manned U-2 spy planes through the mid-2020s. Service officials and analysts cite operational cost issues associated with Global Hawk (click here to see a photo of the RQ-4B Global Hawk) that have been exacerbated given the upcoming budget requests in February. Although Global Hawks have performed extraordinarily well in their relatively short service life, cost overruns and reliability issues have dogged the program in recent years.

As somewhat of a silver lining for the Department of Defense, it appears that the US Navy’s BAMS (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance) UAV, a modified version of the Global Hawk, will continue to be funded and will remain a foundation for high-altitude long-endurance ISR. The USAF certainly won’t take any comfort in this, but we’ll see how this decision plays out once PY13 is released. No word yet on how this might affect international procurement of Global Hawks, in particular with Germany, South Korea, and NATO.

The potential decision to terminate Global Hawk goes against what we’ve heard recently from President Obama and SecDef Panetta. Both have emphasized the strategic US military shift towards Asia-Pacific and both have reinforced the critical need for long distance, persistent, intelligence-gathering platforms. In other words, UAVs such as Global Hawk were thought to be at the leading edge of the new doctrine.

A colleague of mine just shared an interesting perspective. Since Global Hawk was originally developed only as a demo program and was never meant to be operationalized in its current state, perhaps the USAF and the DoD are finally coming to terms with this fact and are instead shifting resources to classified programs that exceed the capabilities of both Global Hawk and the U-2 (click here to see a photo of the U-2S Dragon Lady). Keep in mind that the U-2 still has some superior reconnaissance capabilities, but it’s a 1950s-era airframe with a cost per flight hour just slightly less than that of Global Hawk ($31,000 versus $35,000, according to the USAF Total Ownership Cost database)[1]. 

As I’ve discussed before, this is only the beginning of what we should expect to be difficult and substantial cuts to DoD programs. I think this decision in particular is a bit of a shocker, but perhaps that’s the “new norm” going forward. Fair winds and following seas, Global Hawk.

Fly safe,

Marc

[1] DefenseNews, August 10, 2011; http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110810/DEFSECT01/108100302/Global-Hawk-to-Replace-U-2-in-2015