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

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.

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.

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

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.

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