The US Navy’s Northrop Grumman Global Hawk demonstrator for its planned Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program has returned to the US after an eight month deployment to the Middle East.
The demonstrator, a former USAF RQ-4A Block 10 development aircraft, was based in the Middle East performing operational maritime surveillance and other missions as part of the program to develop the BAMS concept of operations. During its deployment it flew more than 1000 hours in 60 missions, an average of more than 18 hours per mission.
The Navy is due to deploy its first of up to 60 RQ-4B Block 30 based BAMS aircraft from 2015.
