http://theaviationist.com/2012/01/29/global-hawk-campaign/

Saw this from a guy in the industry I follow on twitter. Interesting how we are going to retire a UAV in favor of the U2. I am all for it as I think it helps keep pilots in the Air Force, but very interesting.

Cutbacks. I used to think the Global Hawk was totally essential. I still think it's got amazing capabilities. But in pure dollars, the U2 may actually be cheaper in operational costs, considering the airframe itself is already paid for?


I do think the GH has more capabilities and FAR more room for growth...but...I'm thinking that Strategic Recon may not be as needed from such airframes, and maybe smaller/cheaper UAV's may well have grown to the point of offering basically the same capabilities in a cheaper system, or maybe stealthier: RQ-9 Reaper, and the RQ-170 "Beast of Kandahar".

Maybe the continued dev costs are a bit too much for the same offerings as U2 and Reaper? Maybe the increased loiter time is less an issue with the increased loiter of Reaper and bases in Qatar/Afghanistan?

What do you mean airframe is already paid for ? You mean it's proved its worth or was the GH somehow leased and not integrated ?

they just cut 10 A-10 squadrons too.

Um...no.

I mean the U-2's airframes have long ago been paid for. And there's no controls/communications to FLY it, just have some expensive pilots on call, for the limited number of flight hours, the U-2 might be cheaper, all-in. The advanced part of the U-2 that today requires further development, is the sensor packages...but that's no different than the dev costs for sensor packages for the GH.

The Global Hawk has many advantages, but it's an expensive system. That's all.

A long time ago, someone described fighter jets as something different from pointy-rocket-like scooters with which to have fun slashing away at the clouds...but rather as a platform to hang weapons off of. And that sometimes, platform A may be better simply because it's cheaper to keep in service, than super-jet B. Indeed, the early strike fighters were getting faster and faster top speeds, even though the pilots found it useless and even counterproductive to dropping rockets onto an enemy tank column, thus thicker winged subsonic/transonic jets gained favor. This was seen in American, British and Soviet designs.

Today we don't seem to do much "spyplane" stuff. It's basically just routine surveillance, and for that, you can make do with a lesser airframe sometimes, when you don't have to fly between SAM sites.

I understand the need for cutbacks, but are A-10's the right thing to cut? They don't strike me as being an expensive aircraft to maintain.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120...ssey=nav%7Chead

Also, 5 A-10 squadrons are being cut, along with a F-16 tactical squad and F-15 training squad.

A-10's have spent their entire servicelife unwanted and under threat of being ditched.

Until 2003.

Its very high value in Afghanistan and Iraq invasion, pretty much solidified a much higher status in the USAF. Instead of being retired, its undergoing a major refit/rebuild, along with a dramatic improvement in weapons capability. On a basic spec sheet today's A-10 may look no different, but the gun is now WAY more accurate thanks to newer reticule software for the HUD targeting, and I beleive the control surfaces also do compensation for the gun's substantial recoil. Basically it means the pilot can better place the cannon shells with more ease even while under significant stress and high workload of CAS operations. It also never had laser designation onboard before, it had to have someone else lase for them. Now, they can lase their own targets, but they can also use JDAM GPS too.

Bottom line: whatever happens with the US Defense budget, IMO the A-10 isn't getting cut anytime soon.

If my math isn't off, the USAF has 18 squadrons of A-10s, 5 of which they want to retire. Still leaves a dozen A-10 squadrons.

My understanding U-2 does job MUCH better than GH. GH is like a money sucking leech...with horrid maintenance record and many unkept promises. And don't place MQ9 into same league as strategic recon. They are not same thing.

It may also have some thing to do with losing a drone on a long range spy mission to Iran.

Only the block 30 is being retired/cancelled: the rest of the RQ-4 fleet will stay intact.

But this is only the beginning of the cuts. Get ready for some serious defence belt-tightening over the next couple of years.

Oh, yea, forgot: they feel the A-10 is so valuable, that they reduced the number of squadrons, so that there would be far more available "fresh airframes" to greatly extend the operational life of the aircraft in service. They don't need 500 of them to stop a giant tank invasion...but they do want to add 20-40 years of service to this plane. So they wrap up a few in storage, for when the current ones are truly worn out. But give them a few days and they could put them all in the air again.

BTW: they also are rebuilding parts of the wingboxes to be stronger and last longer than the original design...I think a member of SimHQ was showing us a bit about that (Dice?)

Interesting...yet not that surprising. Seems like ALL the current "high tech" weapons at the top end of complexity seem to be giant money pits of doom. I suspect that there may be some deliberate "gonna need more TLC, give us more money" strategy of padding the program.




I don't. What I'm saying is that maybe they found they didn't need nearly AS MUCH strategic, when the Reaper is giving them such good results for most of what they do with big UAV's.