Global Hawk supports USAF ABMS exercises

Northrop Grumman’s Block 30 Global Hawk was utilised by the USAF during Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) exercises for the United States European Command.

The Global Hawk utilises imagery and signals intelligence collection capabilities to play a significant role as an autonomous high-altitude, long-endurance system in support of military missions.

The USAF’s two-decade use of Global Hawk to collect intelligence and deter regional threats reflects the level of confidence in the platform’s range, endurance and payload capacity.

Global Hawk is able to meet future operational needs by extending and connecting beyond its traditional strategic ISR mission and serve as an airborne network edge node.

This will provide persistent communications relay and secure processing without putting personnel in harm’s way.

The ABMS is intended to integrate existing and new sensors into a new global C2 network for the USAF, it has been based on the concept of the internet of things.

About $3.8 billion will be invested on ABMS between FY2019 and FY2024.

According to Shephard Defence Insight, the Global Hawk UAV has accumulated more than 200,000 flight hours and has been operated by the branches of the US Armed Forces since 2003.