They’ve become a fixture in the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan, a new breed of unmanned aircraft operated with remote controls by “pilots” sitting in virtual cockpits many miles away.
This is a photo of the Global Hawk UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)that returned from the war zone recently under its own power. (Iraq to Edwards AFB in CA) – Not transported via C5 or C17.
Notice the mission paintings (in black) on the fuselage.
It’s actually over 250 missions…(and supposedly 25 air medals).
That’s a long way for a remotely-piloted aircraft.
Think of the technology (and the required quality of the data link to fly it remotely).
Not only that but the pilot controlled it from a nice warm control panel at Edwards AFB.
Really long legs- can stay up for almost 2 days at altitudes above 60,000 ft..
The Global Hawk was controlled via satellite; it flew missions during OT&E that went from Edwards AFB to upper Alaska and back non-stop.
Basically, they come into the fight at a high mach # in mil thrust, fire their AMRAAMS, and no one ever sees them or paints with radar.
There is practically no radio chatter because all the guys in the flight are tied together electronically, and can see who is targeting who, and they have AWACS direct input and 360 situational awareness from that and other sensors The aggressors had a morale problem before it was all over.
It is to air superiority what the jet engine was to aviation.
It can taxi, take off, fly a mission, return, land and taxi on it’s own.
No blackouts, no fatigue, no relief tubes, no ejection seats, and best of all, no dead pilots, no POWs.
Wild Thing’s comment……….
Fantastic, this is amazing how this works.
….Thank you BobF for sending this to me.
Amazing. I have all along heard about unmanned drones, but not like this. That is awesome.
These UAVs are phenominal. The operators sit at a bank of controls and monitors continents away and easily and tirelessly do what even a two man crew in a fighter/bomber can’t accomplish. And most important, if something goes wrong there are no real crewmen to worry about.
I also did not know these UAVs were capable of multyiple mach speed.
Absolutely, any time we can keep a life from being lost do it. We’ve come a long way from the days of a towed drone. As good as the UAV’s are they’ll never completely replace the pilots, someone still has to provide close air support. I fear that Obama’s new Carter Administration will shelve all these innovations in his quest to bring the muzzies up to the 21st century at the expense of all our defense systems and the military. Mugabe’s first will be his motto.
Bob A., I never heard of it before either. I am thrilled they have something like this.
Tom, I agree, I love how it saves the lives of our troops.
Jack, I was wondering about that, like we saw in the video I posted about Obama making big cuts backs in our military and defense.