Bye Bye Global Hawk
 

Global Hawk getting the boot

Well, the writing has been on the wall for awhile now. Good news for the U-2 bubbas? At least they'll be gainfully employed for a LONG time now :D

I don't know anything about what it costs to fly a U-2, but I am both surprised and pleased that it costs less to operate than a Global Hawk. I'll echo WAFP's sentiment that this is hopefully good for the Dragon Lady pilots.

Just seems a littler counter-intuitive that a 40 year old manned spy plane costs less to operate than a modern UAV. :confused:

The USAF has acknowledged that about 25% of Global Hawks have crashed. Makes you wonder if there are more.

According to what I found on the web, including R&D, each GH cost $218 million! The GAO found it had an accident rate 100 times the F-16 in a combat-zone. :eek:

(Northrop said it was unfair to compare a mature system with a new one). :cool:

Preds and Reapers have similar loss rates (70 lost), but are much cheaper ($10 million), so the USAF can justify it.

curious as to where you got the stats...

From the linked article:

"Officials say that while Air Force Block 30 version is being cut, the Navy’s variant could be used by the Air Force. "

Meaning the AF will still fly them and have them, it'll just be a different version.

And why are people worried about unmanned cargo and passenger carriers? That percentage rate is going to have to come down a tad before people and boxes are going to be getting on them.

Counter intuitive until you learn that here at CBP, our UAVs take about 12 people to launch and recover. In Houston they have to have guys all over the city with binos in case it loses link - on the beach, on top of a parking garage, etc. & a dedicated chase crew in the citation. Not to mention the minute wind limits and airspace issues.

Wikipedia. Yeah, I know...although when I look up things there that I have personal knowledge of, it is usually surprisingly good. By extrapolation, I (cautiously) assume other areas are similar.

I had read something about this a couple of years ago in AW&ST; so I checked Wiki to see if I was still in the ballpark.

If you guys have SIPR access go to Beales website, the 9th RSS has some really good briefs on there wrt to capes and lims of both the U-2 and Global Hawk. Bottom line, it was still a long LONG way from ever competing with the U-2 for capability. Even several in the air at once.

Meanwhile, on the home front...
Feds hide data on domestic use of drones — RT

There have been many studies going on about the subject for the last 3 years regarding capability vs cost and so on. Global Chicken has been a money sink hole since it arrived. Reliability and capability just aren't there. And, while I'm sure NG would love to modify the aircraft to whatever the USAF wanted, the cost would be more astronomical.

The U-2 can exploit the full spectrum of reconnassaince at will. Global Hawk cannot. I forget the cost comparison per hour but the U-2 was less than half the cost. That includes the cost of the U-2 pilot.

Bottom line, the Global Hawk can fly for twice as long as the U-2, but it produces 20% of the intelligence in that time for over double the hourly cost.

And, a kudo for Congress for once, they have prevented the USAF twice from retiring the U-2 to free up funds for more Global Hawk improvements..........

Basically, wrote it into law that the U-2 cannot be retired until the USAF could prove that the replacement could perform to the same level.

Sure, the technology will one day be there to replace it. Just not tomorrow. And, as the USAF learned the hard way, just because the Predator family was such a success doesn't mean it will directly translate to a truly different mission.

I also have to wonder what if any impact the UAV loss into Iran may have had in this final decision to what really has been a heated but confidential debate on the subject.

Cheers,
Lee

Respectfully steering this thread into a U-2 appreciation thread with the submission of the following:



and

A bit of a layman's tour of the cockpit, but it is cool to see just how far the avionics have been improved.

What becomes of these guys?

U.S. AIR FORCE Firsts Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Pilots Graduate 1/13/12 - YouTube

There are still Predators and Reapers...I'm sure there will be others, too. Those platforms are fairly effective. The RPA guys will still go there.

The Global Hawk is the issue. Just too expensive for what it gave back.

We should have left the conversation about 5 posts ago. You all use your heads. Loose lips sink ships.

They're still doing their thing. As much as we all want to see this happen, for whatever the reason, the word that we need to pay attention to is that this is just a "proposal" and until Congress signs the budget into effect GH ain't going anywhere. But, I'll be honest and say the writing is on the wall. Now we just have to wait for the budget to be approved....that should go perfectly. HA

As stated above this is just a proposal. There is still funding for the Navy's BAMS jets, and the block 40's. I feel for the U-2 guys that may lose their jobs one day, but how many U-2 pilots are flying GH's for Northrop now? You only hate em until they put food on the table.

Global Hawk..we'll see.

Drones? In for now.

Military Prepares Realignment: More Drones, Special Forces - WSJ.com

Nothing was stated you couldn't find in Janes/Aviation Week/A Chinese bathroom wall.

For those getting excited at the potential loss of the US' ability to project power and gather intelligence, don't get too worked up. This is more of a prevention of concurrent developmental efforts, both the USAF and the USN don't need to fund parallel developmental programs. One service can work the baseline development and the other service can do incremental programs for service-specific requirements if they decide to pursue them at a later date. FWIW, I was quite impressed with the developments that the USN is planning on pursuing and I would have made the same decision. There are some very real limfacs on the current versions that the USN is planning on eliminating (sensor and airframe), and I'd like to see them be successful. The Block 40 versions the USAF wants are being pursued for the sensor suite.

For those comparing the Global Hawk and the U2; think of two people arguing over which is better, the F-16 or the A-10 without first laying down the framework of what the employment scenario/environment is. For all of its limitations (which in time will lessen), there are PLENTY of scenarios where a Global Hawk can do what a U2 can't.

As much as I dislike some of the politics involved with the UAV community, you do raise a good point. The real-time ISR capability that these platforms provide is beneficial to all. Eliminating concurrent development frees funding, research, and development for other important projects that also benefit the warfighter.

Politics and the UAV community, are you kidding??? Politics is scrapping every current fighter and bomber so we can buy 187 F-22s and have the hope of some F-35s. Politics is withholding funding to the F-15 in the '90s so the F-22 could look more critical. Politics is retiring the USAF heavy-lift helos before the V-22 had even entered OT&E to influence any considerations of cancelations.

There is certainly room for discussion on the merits of RPA, but I haven't seen it lately. Most people's discussions are guided by a lack of direct knowledge of what RPA means (Scan Eagle, Raven, MQ-1, MQ-9, RQ-4, etc are NOT all the same) and how they are used. They are also motivated by nothing more than having a person in the cockpit.

Fortunately, there are those who see that their allegiances go more to the destruction of the enemy than to the ability of any individual to fly an airplane. There are real fiscal constraints, whether we choose to ignore them or not. There are real ROE constraints that prevent the wholesale destruction seen in wars 60 years ago. There are real political constraints both within and outside of our nation that limit what we can do and where we can do it.

There is still a requirement for manned assets, but not for the reasons that are usually articulated. The current anti-RPA argument on this board has many parallels to the argument the calvary people put up in the 20's, 30's, and 40's. Had Gen LeMay been told he could have technology at the advanced state that it is now and that the technology could lead him to and even kill Hitler or any of his or Japan's leadership, he would have jumped on it even had it cost him 25% of his B-29 fleet. He, as all military people should be, was concerned more about killing the enemy than he was about anyone's ability to log flight hours.

I begrudge no one's desire to fly, I was one of those people; but the military is the military. Even when I got in, there were no guarantees of anything. If flying is ALL that one wants to do, there are other routes.

Actually, no I am not kidding about politics in the UAV community. It's not like the other examples that you cited though. Regardless of personal opinions regarding RPA's and the role they play, it is quite apparent that the "Drone lobby" does have some serious pull in Congress as do other defense projects. Below are some links to consider reading.

Congressional UAV boosters collected nearly War Is Business | News and research about defense contractors and the arms trade.8 million

Border Lines: Cong. Reyes and the Drone Lobby

While I do not favor some of the views on this website, the article is worth some reading and consideration.

How the Drone Warfare Industry Took Over Our Congress | News & Politics | AlterNet

I don't think that anyone with recent experience in theater will deny the capability that RPA's bring to the fight. Unfortunately, we have to "rob Peter to pay Paul" in regards to fiscal issues. The cancellation of this particular project will allow the Air Force to free up funding for other important projects as well.

So what do you do in a U2 during a routine 10-12 hour mission and have to take a dump or ****? Just a nagging question I've always had.

You have an enema to clean you out before hand.

Enema? Not hardly. Pilots wear a urine control device (UCD) during the mission. It's just a heavy duty condom connected to a relief tube. As for number two...we just eat with discretion the night prior.

HH

While those articles clearly articulate the associations with the RPA industry and Congress, we have yet to see those associations have much of an effect on military operations and military decisions to date. The reality is that USAF and USN leadership have actually stiff-armed RPA involvement by and large. The AF pushed RPA away from A3 to A2 and one of the famous falling outs between SECDEF Gates and USAF leadership involved Gates' belief that USAF leadership was slow-rolling RPA deployment. USN leadership was more successful, operating just a few MQ-9s, some small UAVs, and only now are they getting into BAMS.

What all of those articles fail to make clear is what the goals of the industry members of that organization are, I think military ops are not close to the top of the list. First off, I will say that membership in an organization like this is not necessarily all bad. As the target audience of much of the technology and the controller of the purse strings, it makes some sense that civilian leadership be informed of the capabilities. The same goes to ops in the national airspace system, as they control the FAA indirectly (through the budget and confirmation process), they should probably be aware of the state of that process. I actually think that if you were to ask industry what the most important thing congress could do for them was, they would point to NAS operations.

Dude, the fallacy that many have been operating under is that it hasn't ALWAYS been a rob Peter to pay Paul world. Just because the DoD budgets were allowed to spiral with no controls in place over the last few years doesn't mean that reality wouldn't set in at some point (or that reality shouldn't have been imposed earlier). Let me use an analogy: if you owned a taxi/limo service, would you equip your fleet solely with 30 pax buses when only 2% of your business required 30 pax buses and the average trip was only 3 pax? We have to equip our military to fight across the entire spectrum, but we focus SOLELY on the high end of the spectrum and end up with a lesser equipped military in the end.

Our entire airlift fleet doesn't have to be C-17s when only a small percentage of our airlift requirement requires outsized cargo capability or austere field delivery - maybe if we reduced our C-17 buy by 25% and spent that money on lesser capable airlift aircraft we'd have 25%-35% more total airlift aircraft in the fleet. Look at how many hours we're putting on C-17s with aeromedical missions, channels, etc (all missions that don't require C-17 capabilities), aging the fleet prematurely, when we could more evenly distribute those hours across a larger fleet had we spent the money better.

The same goes for the F-22. 187 F-22s total for a global air superiority mission???? Only 25% or less of the possible scenarios require pure F-22 capes and we only really need enough F-22s to accomplish that mission. We'd be better off with 50 F-22s and 250 upgraded F-15s (assuming a 2:1 cost of F-15 upgrade to F-22 purchase - an over-estimation of the upgrade cost).

The same even applies to your helicopters. The only combat helos we have now are the UH-60s and the V-22, and we don't have very many of them. We lost MH-53s a long time ago due to the Peter and Paul concept. How many times has ACC given away and taken back the rescue role? All of that was over nothing more than ACC not wanting to divert dollars from fighters/bombers to helos.

Don't forget that we've also gotten rid of a portion of the B-1 fleet (and 2 Guard B-1 squadrons - the two with the highest MR rate at the time), F-117s, F-15s, ANG F-16s, etc. In addition to the the fact that our equipment has gotten better, it's gotten more expensive so now we have less of it. Many will readily admit that their are plenty of scenarios that we are less capable of handling today than we were 10 years ago.

We need a full-spectrum military. In particular, our USAF needs to be able to support the Army across their entire spectrum of operations. That means airlift of people and material, that means CAS as well as battlefield preparation and interdiction, that means counter-air, and that means full-spectrum ISR before/during/and after any dynamic events - from the most limited engagement all the way to full-scale conventional on conventional battle. And, to tie this to the thread, nowhere in there is a mandate to keep a man in the cockpit. It's all about the mission, and it's the job of military leadership to do what it takes to accomplish the mission (killing the enemy and keeping US forces safe), not pad someone's logbook. If it takes RPA to give everyone who needs it ISR, so be it. If it takes RPA to give everyone who needs it CAS, so be it. As I've said in another post, it isn't MQ-1 vs F-16 for the guy on the ground, it's MQ-1 or nothing because we don't have that many F-16s anymore. We didn't get rid of F-16s because we bought RPA; even the ANG F-16 squadrons that converted from F-16s to RPA - they were losing their airplanes regardless. Thankfully, we had RPA to replace the aircraft we lost.

I don't think we'll see the effect of lobbyist on military decisions nor operations but rather purchasing. (An additional concern of mine is Homeland Security/LE use..but that is a different thread all together.) The Air Force purchased the Block 30 Global Hawk for about $200 million per aircraft and now suddenly claims that they are not performing to expectations and are ending procurement. Makes you wonder what influenced the Air Force to "buy in" for what is now an inadequate product.

True, a famous idiot once said "We don't go to war with the military we want, but the one we have." Yes, there was a time that we didn't live in the "rob Peter to pay Paul" world. However, the sad fact is that our Congress has spent so irresponsibly in the past decade someone has to pay. I think we all know that some sacred cows will not be sent to slaughter, so we are stuck in a rut to save one program at the expense of another. I don't like it one bit. But, it is what it is. Over the past decade we have been sold a bunch of "shiny nickles." "Shiny nickles" are what I call projects that are insanely expensive, benefit certain defense contractors in certain Congressional districts, and are pushed aggressively by lobbyists often at the expense of other vitally needed spending.:mad:

Couldn't agree more, not knocking the C-17 it's a fine aircraft and definitely has it's place. But, some aspects of the program are a fine example of lobbying out of control and Congress trying to give us more "shiny nickles."

The Senators

+1, another example of how defense lobbying can get out of control and we get stuck with "shiny nickles."

When Gates stared down the F-22 lobbyists - CSMonitor.com

Don't let my CV-22 brothers hear you say that, they prefer to be called "tilt-rotor.":D


ACC/AFSOC/ACC,really didn't matter who we belonged to. The only change we seen was the color of the patches on our flight suits.

Couldn't agree more, we must be able to procure the best technology available on limited funds to support the warfighter. Most people would care less if the next platform to replace the Block 30 Global Hawks are manned or unmanned. As long as we aren't getting sold another "shiny nickle" by some defense lobbyist and it's truly the best platform to support the warfighter then so be it.

The U-2s are not the only high flyers in Afghanstan. A NASA WB-57F (USAF RB-57F) has been there off and on for years. The mission demands are so high that a third "F" has been removed from the bone yard and sent to "overhaul" including avionics / reconnaissance package updates. There are rumors of new engines to replace the TF-33s.

http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/h...61410-Copy.jpg

In my day it was a high protein low residual diet and no stimulant drinks 24 hours before flying in a pressure suit. You don't eat chile and drink coffee the night before.

For those heralding UAVs as the future, there were discussions in the intel community quite a while ago about their vulnerabilities. I don't see a future in UAVs due to those vulnerabilities.
Interesting article: Iran's Alleged Drone Hack: Tough, but Possible | Danger Room | Wired.com

I doubt that the Iranians did this independently; they almost certainly had help from a more cyber-savvy country.

Pakistan? :eek:

The GH has a wingspan about that of a 727, and flies up to 65,000', with a mission time of a couple of days.

I was recently reading about a new UAV, with the wingspan of about a 747, that flies up to about 85,000', and has a mission time of about 12 days. Trying to find more info now, but so far no luck....read about it some months ago.

cliff
HSV

...and half the mission payload of a U-2.

HH

Which is half the mission payload of a WB-57F (RB-57F) with a systems operator to run all of it. Actually the "F" has a 1,000 lb higher payload but the cubic space available in the "bomb bay" is "big." In the 1960s we carrier a camera that was the size of a VW.

http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/h...ppilot/P65.jpg

That's an impressive payload (sts), but it's not always about the size of the sensor. These aren't bombs, these are intelligence platforms. Bigger and better cameras (especially film cameras) were the sensor of choice during the cold war when strategic intelligence reigned supreme, but tactical intelligence is a whole different animal.

Sometimes what the COCOMs need is persistent SA that may or may not be imint. There is usually value in the traditional imagery analysis after the flight's over, but in today's wars the decision-makers more often need to know what's going on right now for days on end. They all have their place, but it's usually about the right tool at the right time, not the biggest tool for a short duration of time.

...which can now be handled with a camera the size of a VW...carburetor.
...then transmit the image across the globe with a 3 second delay.

wait, what were we talking about again?

Whats a carburetor??? :D

U-2 does both imint and sigint, simultaneously, real time...and has for 35+ years. GH killed itself by over-promising and under-delivering for over a decade. It never reached parity with the U-2 and that's why it was chopped.

HH

Huey, read the posts. My post was clearly a reference to ftroop and his picture of an imint payload.

As for the rest of my post, you missed the days on end part. The U-2 has great sensors, but not the persistence that the commanders need in today's counter-insurgency limited boots on the ground conflict. Virtual presence beats no presence. Simultaneous, persistent, re-taskable near real-time SAR, IMINT, and SIGINT can be invaluable to a COCOM.

I am not a fan of the GH, it is a mis-managed under-performing asset. However, if BAMS can do what they intend to, most of those limitations will be eliminated. Regardless, my posts have never been a my plane vs your plane argument; it's effects and deliverables. Given time, engineers can make an RPA that approaches U-2 fidelity with RPA endurance and range. They will nevet make a U-2 approach RPA endurance or range. That's not advocacy, it's realism.