In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ike, the Navy flew one of its two Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration (GHMD) platforms to take pictures of damaged areas and search for survivors, a Northrop Grumman [NOC] official said.
The Navy’s GHMD flew from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., to the Gulf Coast, remaining on station for 13 hours, Ed Walby, Global Hawk business development director, told sister publication Defense Daily.
The Global Hawk, equipped with Electro Optical InfraRed (EOIR) sensors, flew for approximately 25 hours and took more than 500 images, he said.
“We do know the customer was very satisfied…the customer being FEMA,” he added.
Both the Air Force and Navy are tasked to be on standby for hurricane support, Walby said. Both services had assets ready to fly in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav, but neither service was called into action because damage from that storm was not as extensive as anticipated, he added.
While the GHMD has software on one of its three sensors modified for maritime tracking that the Air Force variant does not have, Walby noted the Air Force’s Block 10 and the Navy’s GHMD are going to go toward a merged software so they both have the same capability.
“The Navy asked for some specifies for their airplanes. It makes sense that the Air Force has those also,” he said. “We are under contract for that.”
Walby said it will be less expensive to maintain one software load and to go forward with one common software bundle. “You don’t want to have two, three, four different kinds for one customer.”
The move toward a merged software will only go into the Block 10 and the GHMD, he noted.
Northrop Grumman should complete that work within the next year, Walby added.
“If you look at the requirements documents for Air Force program there are requirements out there in the future to add some maritime capability to those other blocks,” he said. “Those haven’t been well defined yet because they are out there as future capabilities.”
There are some things the Air Force is looking at that are part of the Northrop Grumman’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) system that will likely be retrofitted onto the Air Force airframes, Walby said.
For example, the Navy has requirements to have deicing on the leading edge of the wing. The Air Force doesn’t, Walby said. “It’s not a bad idea to have deicing. So the Air Force is working with Navy right now. They are looking at common things like that. The Air Force would benefit from that…retrofitting a deicing leading edge on their aircraft.”
The Navy has an air traffic search radar that the Air Force might want to adopt, Walby added. And there are things the Air Force is doing that maybe the Navy will adopt, he added. “The more you keep those things common the less expensive they are and [it’s] better for both services.”
Northrop Grumman has been championing Global Hawk for hurricanes ever since NOAA came to the company and said they wanted to track hurricanes using the unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Following the most recent wildfires in California, the company and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began discussing the idea again, Walby said.
“Because you are at 60,000 feet, above the other aircraft, you don’t have to worry about the hurricane and the weather associated with it,” he said. “You are carrying three different sensors on board–a radar that can see through the clouds, you have EOIR…you can pick out people on rooftops if they are stranded. You can find ships at sea if they are in distress.”
The Air Force is also talking about adding a communications relay package in the future so that they could provide first responder communications in the event that cell towers and power go out, Walby said. “You could park a Global Hawk over Galveston [Texas] and provide first responders a communication link. Those are things that are very openly talked about. They have a military application, obviously, but they also have a perfect match to civilian needs,” Walby said.
Northrop Grumman looked at the whole concept of using all of Global Hawk’s capabilities during a hurricane scenario, Walby added.
“Our position…you ought to be able to fly a pre-strike mission. Let’s say we were one day out of Ike showing up. You go out with you radar and other imagery cameras, and tag every oil platform, every ship at sea. You know where they are based on the imagery supplied, and you know their condition. You archive that on board [Global Hawk],” he said. “As the hurricane strikes, you can use that radar to see which [oil] platforms may have moves, which ships are in distress.”
NOAA wants to use Global Hawk to follow every single tropical depression as it spins off of Africa, Walby said. “With a small fleet of Global Hawks you can literally, continuously sample every single tropical depression…archive all that data, so [NOAA] can refine their predictive models.”