Unmanned Spy Plane Gets Test Deployment
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EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The Air Force’s newest spy plane landed here Friday on its first deployment from its home base in California--but no pilot got out of the cockpit.
The $25-million Global Hawk, still in the demonstration phase, does not even have a cockpit. It’s an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, that can fly on its own for up to 35 hours as high as 65,000 feet.
Its missions will be those that are too “dull, dirty and dangerous” to risk a pilot, said Col. Craig R. McPherson, program director for the Global Hawk at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
“You shoot this down and you have a smoking hole in the ground,” McPherson said. “But you haven’t lost the pilot. The last thing you want to do is have the pilot paraded down the main street of a Kosovo-type of environment.”
On its way to the Florida Panhandle from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Global Hawk No. 4 transmitted pictures of boats in the Gulf of Mexico for the Coast Guard to demonstrate its potential for the interdiction of drugs.
Global Hawks are made by the Ryan Aeronautical Center of Northrop Grumman in San Diego.
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