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Published Saturday, April 21, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News Robotic spy jet ready to cross pacific ocean HISTORIC JOURNEY: AIRCRAFT WILL HEAD TO AUSTRALIA ON SUNDAY IN FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND FLIGHT, 8,600 MILES WITHOUT CREW ON BOARD BY ANDREW BRIDGES Associated Press EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE -- A robotic reconnaissance jet developed for the Air Force will try to fly from California to Australia on Sunday in what officials hope will make it the first such aircraft to cross the Pacific Ocean. With no pilot or onboard crew, the Global Hawk spy plane should make the 22 1/2-hour, 8,600-mile flight without human intervention, taking off from the Mojave Desert before dawn and landing at a Royal Australian Air Force Base outside Adelaide. If the flight is successful, it would be the farthest a robotic aircraft has flown between two points, said Robert Ettinger, manager of the Global Hawk flight test program for manufacturer Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Ryan Aeronautical Center. Since its maiden flight in 1998, the Global Hawk has made flights of 30 hours and more. Its capacity for endurance, combined with a telescopic camera that can tell the difference between a sedan and a pickup truck from altitudes of 65,000 feet, make the plane ideal for surveillance and reconnaissance. The awkward-looking plane with a 116-foot wingspan resembles a killer whale, thanks to a bulbous nose that hides an antenna 4 feet in diameter. On takeoff, the Global Hawk's mammoth wings droop under 15,000 pounds of fuel that accounts for 60 percent of the aircraft's weight. A Rolls-Royce engine sits astride the fuselage, framed by a distinctive V-shaped tail. ``It's one only its mother loves,'' Ettinger said of the plane's looks. Once the Global Hawk takes off Sunday, it will fly nearly twice as high as commercial jets travel. Northrop designed the plane to fly as far as 1,400 miles from its base, crisscross a target for 24 hours to acquire radar, infrared and black-and-white images, and then return home. The plane cost more than $750 million to develop during the last seven years. Although designed primarily for reconnaissance, the Global Hawk also could be equipped with eavesdropping devices such as those aboard the EP-3E Aries II spy plane being held by China, Ettinger said. The plane flying Sunday has been dubbed the ``Southern Cross II'' in honor of the first aircraft to fly from the United States to Australia. The original Southern Cross, a three-engine Fokker that departed from Oakland, and its crew made the trip in several legs in 1928. |
