The US Air Force and the German defence ministry have given the green light for trials of a Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk equipped with an EADS signals intelligence (SIGINT) payload in German civil airspace in October.
In parallel, the defence ministry is to release a draft requirement for an unmanned air vehicle-based replacement for its Dassault Atlantic SIGINT aircraft at the end of this month.
The trials programme will comprise six flights, including deployment and return to the USA. The EADS SIGINT payload will be fitted to the RQ-4 after it arrives in Germany, and will be removed before it returns.
EADS will also retain control of data produced by the SIGINT payload during the trials, although USAF personnel will control the Global Hawk during flying operations. The UAV will be based in northern Germany during the trials.
The release of the draft German requirement will be followed by the issuing of a formal request for proposals by early October this year. The German air force requires the replacement system to have been accepted into service before it withdraws the Atlantics from service in 2008.
Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman has released new details of its RQ-4B configuration for the USAF. The aircraft will have a wingspan of 40m (130.9ft) and a length of 14.5m. The configuration excludes winglets, with studies concluding that their inclusion would complicate aircraft handling characteristics with only minimal gains in performance.
The revised configuration will support a gross take-off weight of 14,640kg (32,250lb). The design also includes new landing gear pods, the addition of a second pressurised fuselage bay to enable carriage of more mission payloads, and a fuel measurement system.
Source: Flight International
