By Marina Malenic
ORLANDO–The prime contractor for the Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone is doing all it can to lower the cost of the program amid the Defense Department’s decision to slash the number of aircraft it intends to buy.
“Our biggest focus right now in the program is affordability,” Ed Walby, a Northrop Grumman [NOC] business development director, said during an interview on the sidelines of the Air Force Association’s annual winter meeting here yesterday.
“We want to make Global Hawk more affordable and more useful,” Walby told Defense Daily. “The platform can do things far beyond the requirements.”
He said the company has over 100 cost-saving initiatives in place. Northrop Grumman is seeking “better ways to buy parts” and “better ways to do business more generally.”
Earlier this week, the Air Force announced that the Block 40 Global Hawk would be “truncated” from 22 to 11 aircraft.
“We are using the savings to make capability improvements in the Block 30…in the area of electro-optical/infrared” payload, Maj. Gen. Alfred Flowers, the air force’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, said during a Feb. 14 Pentagon briefing.
The Block 40 variant carries the multi-platform technology insertion program radar. Eleven Block 40s, in conjunction with the E-8C Joint-STARS fleet that provides the same capability, “is sufficient to meet our requirements,” Marilyn Thomas, principle deputy air force controller, said during the same briefing.
The Air Force is requesting $311 million to buy three Block 30s in fiscal 2012. Nine Block 40s have been purchased, and the Air Force has requested funding for two more in fiscal 2011, which Congress has not yet approved.
Walby called the decision to “truncate” the Block 40 buy a “strategic pause.”
“The Air Force could still resume buy in [fiscal] ’13,” he said. “It’s just too early to tell what the outcome will be.”
Meanwhile, he said, the company is still on track to deliver the first Eurohawk and sign a NATO AGS contract this summer.