Dragon Lady vs. Global Hawk

Spy vs Spy; Hagel-style

by Craig Hoyle on 26 February, 2014 in Defense With an 'S'

Chuck Hagel’s announcement earlier this week of proposed platform cuts for the US Air Force and army will shake up Washington’s military machine in a big way – if the Department of Defense’s fiscal year 2015 proposal survives first contact with Congress.

We’ve reported before about how the ground-attack-specialised A-10 could be flying towards a cost-saving fleet retirement post-Afghanistan, and also about how the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior could be retired without the need for an expensive Armed Aerial Scout procurement; ie use the Apache.

But one of the big battles now about to play out concerns the USAF’s delivery of high-altitude surveillance. The service last year detailed plans to halt the use of its Block 30 Global Hawks, as the manned U-2 (USAF image of the rivals below) could do the job at a lower operating cost. But now Hagel says that the 50-year-old type is for the chop, as the air force has found a way of making the Global Hawk more affordable to fly.

We’ll have a story appearing on Flightglobal soon about a new Lockheed effort to save the “Dragon Lady”; we can expect this one to get interesting.