[CTRL] Unmanned spy plane makes first test deployment

[Shane A. Saylor, Eccentric Bard]

Unmanned spy plane makes first test deployment

April 21, 2000
Web posted at: 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT)

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Florida (AP) -- 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, California,
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
and other contraband.

While at Eglin, the glider-like UAV, which has a 116-foot wingspan, will
take part in two military exercises.

Global Hawks are made by the Ryan Aeronautical Center of Northrop Grumman in
San Diego, although final assembly is going to be moved to Palmdale,
California, said Carl Johnson, the company's Global Hawk program director.

Two more Global Hawks will be delivered later this year. Two more should be
completed in 2003 and the Air Force plans to acquire two each year from then
on until it has as many as 48.
--
Everything on this earth has a purpose, and every disease an herb to
cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of
existence. --Mourning Dove, 1888-1936

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