Global Hawk
Triumph Aerostructures Responsibility
Triumph Aerostructures-Produced Integrated Aerostructures
Triumph Aerostructures has been on the Global Hawk program since 2000, responsible for the wing fabrication, assembly and structural testing. The company built two prototypes and nine production wing sets under its initial contract with Northrop Grumman for the original Block 10 version.
Today Triumph Aerostructures produces wings for the latest generations of Global Hawk.The new versions of Global Hawk feature an increased wing span of approximately 15 feet, allowing it to carry a larger payload, more fuel and fly longer missions than its predecessor. Triumph Aerostructures’ work includes design development, fabrication, assembly and structural testing of the new wing. The Block 20 wing, at 130.9 feet, is the longest wing ever delivered from Triumph Aerostructures' Dallas facility.
About the Global Hawk
The RQ-4 Global Hawk is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) built by Northrop Grumman that performs autonomous high-altitude, long-endurance surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
Global Hawk is designed to provide military field commanders with high-resolution, near-real-time imagery of large geographic areas for long periods of time. It is the world's first fully autonomous high-altitude, long-endurance UAS, collecting persistent ground surveillance data over a wide area for both military intelligence analysis and warfighters’ battle management and targeting. Global Hawk can fly at altitudes of more than 60,000 feet for more than 32 hours, providing surveillance day or night, regardless of weather conditions.
The combat-proven Global Hawk reached an important milestone in 2009 by exceeding more than 40,000 cumulative flight hours for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. More than 76 percent of these flight hours were flown in support of overseas contingency operations (OCO) efforts.
This milestone comes on the heels of several recent successes, including the Global Hawk’s 2,000th mission and deployment of the first Navy aircraft for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Demonstration (BAMS-D) program. BAMS will play a key role in providing commanders with a persistent, reliable picture of surface threats, covering vast areas of open ocean and littoral regions, minimizing the need to utilize other manned assets to execute surveillance and reconnaissance tasks.
