Northrop Grumman, L-3 MAS to develop new UAS
Northrop Grumman L-3 MAS have announced plans today to join forces on a variant of the Northrop Grumman-produced Global Hawk high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for Canada to maintain continuous surveillance of its Arctic territories.
The system, called the Polar Hawk, will be designed to stay aloft for long periods of time in harsh weather conditions over vast expanses of the Earth's surface monitoring land, ice, littoral and open water environments throughout the Arctic.
It will fly at 60,000 feet, well above challenging weather and all commercial air traffic, with a range of over 22,000 kilometres and stay airborne for more than 33 hours, day or night in all weather conditions, the companies said.
According to the two companies, in addition to its surveillance payloads, Polar Hawk has the power to support and can be equipped with a wide range of instrumentation for conducting science and environmental missions, as demonstrated by NASA using earlier versions of the Global Hawk UAS as far as 85 degrees north latitude. It can also be deployed to support humanitarian missions and provide surveillance over Canada's vast territory stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific territorial waters and coasts.
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