Lawmaker Wants To Keep Funding Global Hawk

Photo: USAF

Mar 29, 2012 By Jen DiMascio - aerospace daily and defense report

Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk Block 30 may have a shot at escaping U.S. Air Force plans to place it in storage.

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, says he will recommend continuing funding for the high-flying unmanned aircraft. “That may prevail, at least in the House defense subcommittee.”

According to Moran, the “taxpayer is best served” by the Global Hawk, as compared to the U-2 intelligence-gathering aircraft, which the Air Force wants to continue using.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and Secretary Mike Donley have said using the U-2 would yield $2.5 billion in savings over five years. Schwartz has said the U-2’s electro-optic/infrared sensor and signal capabilities are better, and that reliability on the Global Hawk is an issue.

But Moran and others on the House subcommittee have argued that it is a waste to have turned out so many aircraft only to let them gather dust.

“I think it’s wrong to mothball 18 of them in the desert ... [the Global Hawk] represents the future,” Moran says, adding that the Air Force’s decision to continue to operate U-2 aircraft “largely represents the past.”

With the coming retirement of Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Moran will be a viable candidate to lead Democrats on the defense spending subcommittee.