January 3, 2013: After cancelling an order five years ago, South Korea has come back and once again ordered four RQ-4B (Block 30) Global Hawk UAVs. These will be equipped with EISS (Enhanced Integrated Sensor Suite) and electronics package that combines day/night cameras and synthetic aperture radar (which can provide photo like images in all weather). With support, training, and spares this will cost about $1.2 billion. The new RQ-4s will arrive in two years.

South Korea had backed out of an earlier deal to buy four RQ-4s in 2008, because of sticker shock. While much was made of the basic cost of each Global Hawk ($21 million), a South Korea government report subsequently pointed out that the overall cost of each UAV could go as high as $131 million and the total cost would be closer to a billion dollars. Meanwhile, the much smaller Shadow 200 UAV (which the U.S. Army uses extensively to support brigade and division intelligence efforts) costs about $300,000 each and could do most of what the South Koreans wanted the Global Hawk for.

The official reason given was that such a purchase would violate the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime) treaty. This is a 1987 agreement meant to control the proliferation of unmanned systems capable of delivering nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In 1992, the treaty was amended to include unmanned aircraft (in addition to ballistic and cruise missiles). Currently, 34 nations have signed on to the MTCR. According to the South Koreans, the Shadow 200 doesn't violate the MTCR. Now, with the growing threat from North Korea, the MTCR is seen as less of an issue.

Another interesting angle to all this is that a year ago the U.S. Air Force cancelled all orders for the Block 30 Global Hawk because of unreliability issues. This renewed Department of Defense threats to cancel the program. But Northrop Grumman (the RQ-4 manufacturer) lobbyists have made sure the key members of Congress knew where Global Hawk components were being built and how many jobs that added up to. This delayed the RQ-4 Block 30 cancellation until last month, when Congress ordered the air force to accept the Block 30 RQ-4s and shut up. The air force can take some comfort in the fact that Northrop Grumman fixed some of the problems (some of which the manufacturer said don't exist or didn't matter). The Block 30 was supposed to be good to go but the air force was not convinced and decided that Block 30 was just more broken promises. Congress was also tired of all the feuding and being caught between Northrup lobbyists and exasperated air force generals. The lobbyists, as is usually the case, eventually won. Then there is still the political decision to cut the defense budget over the next decade. In addition to its lobbyists, Northrop Grumman mobilized engineers to stabilize the Block 30. Apparently South Korea was convinced.

You'd think the RQ-4 would be somewhat perfected by now. Development of the RQ-4 began in the 1990s, as a DARPA research project. But by 2006, per-aircraft costs were 25 percent over the original price. By 2007, production schedules had slipped as well. The air force and Northrop Grumman disagreed over what caused these problems. The air force blamed it on poor management. Northrop Grumman said it's all about dealing with complex technology. The air force pointed out that the RQ-4 was not high tech. The sensors often are but they are added to the aircraft after they came off the production line. Northrop Grumman continued to stonewall the air force and showed no signs of making any basic changes.

Things started off on a more promising note. The RQ-4 was still in development on September 11, 2001, but was rushed into action. The first production RQ-4A was not delivered until August, 2003. Although the RQ-4 could stay in the air for up to 42 hours, all of them had only amassed about 4,000 flight hours by 2004. But most of those 4,000 hours, which were originally planned to involve testing of a new aircraft, were instead used to perform combat missions. Global Hawk also got to fly under difficult conditions, something an aircraft still being developed would not do.

Five years ago a RQ-4A Global Hawk made the first non-stop crossing of the Pacific, flying 12,000 kilometers from California to Australia in 23 hours. The Global Hawk has previously crossed the Pacific in several hops but it always had the endurance to do it non-stop. In the last decade RQ-4s have flown over 55,000 hours, most of that combat missions and many of them from Persian Gulf bases. The latest models can fly 20 hour missions, land for refueling and maintenance, and be off in four hours for another twenty hours in the sky. But the reliability issues with the Block 30 made the longer missions infrequent. Otherwise, the RQ-4 has been very reliable, with aircraft being ready for action 95 percent of the time. An RQ-4 can survey about 4,000 square kilometers an hour.

The current (B) version of the RQ-4 is about ten percent larger (wingspan of 42.3 meters/131 feet and 15.5 meters/48 feet long) than the A model and can carry an additional two tons of equipment. To support that there's a new generator that produces 150 percent more electrical power. The B version is a lot more reliable. Early A models tended to fail and crash at the rate of once every thousand flight hours, mostly because of design flaws. The first three RQ-4Bs entered service in 2006.

At 13 tons the Global Hawk is the size of a commuter airliner (like the Embraer ERJ 145) but costs nearly twice as much. Global Hawk can be equipped with much more powerful, and expensive, sensors than other UAVs. The spy satellite quality sensors (especially AESA radar) are usually worth the expense because they enable the UAV, flying at about 20,000 meters, to get a sharp picture of all the territory it can see from that altitude.

Because the U.S. Navy bought Global Hawks to perform maritime reconnaissance, Australia was encouraged to buy some as well, to monitor the vast stretches of ocean that surround the island continent. Germany has bought the RQ-4 and NASA uses two of them. There has been plenty of competition for RQ-4 work. In addition to the manned U-2, there is a longer (42 hours) endurance version of the five ton Reaper as well as the jet powered version of the Reaper called Avenger. This aircraft can do 85 percent of what the RQ-4 can but costs half as much. Moreover, the Avenger is 29 percent faster, although it only has endurance of 20 hours, compared to 35 for the RQ-4. Most importantly, the Avenger and Reaper come from a manufacturer (General Atomics) that has been much more dependable than Northrop Grumman.