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On May 4, the first U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk remotely piloted system arrived at Misawa Air Base, Japan, where it is scheduled to operate from May to October 2014.
The huge Northrop Grumman UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) was deployed to Japan to support ISR (Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance) missions in the Pacific theater, carried out by a team of a team of 40 personnel belonging to the 69th Reconnaissance Group, Detachment 1.
Misawa Air Base was selected as an alternate base weighing a wide variety of factors, including seasonal weather patterns, facilities locally available, costs.
originally posted by: sulaw
a reply to: Sammamishman
As awesome as this is.... I had my heart set on Mecha Godzilla... I'm a little disapointed...
originally posted by: gspat
Looks quite similar to a cruise missile...
Could probably be used as one too.
The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance aircraft.
It was initially designed by Ryan Aeronautical (now part of Northrop Grumman), and known as Tier II+ during development. In role and operational design, the Global Hawk is similar to the Lockheed U-2.
The RQ-4 provides a broad overview and systematic surveillance using high resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and long-range electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors with long loiter times over target areas. It can survey as much as 40,000 square miles (100,000 km2) of terrain a day.