Embedded with the Global Hawk

Last year, Robert Kaplan wrote this engaging story for the Atlantic about "embedding" with the Predator squadron at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas. But the crown jewel of unmanned surveillance is the high-flying Global Hawk, and last year Amy Butler of Aviation Week & Space Technology was the first reporter allowed to view operators controlling the unmanned aircraft from Beale Air Force Base in California.

Her article this week has some good details about how the Global Hawk is used to support border operations in Iraq:

*During a classified mission, which was observed by this reporter, the aircraft makes numerous passes--some in rapid succession--of the Syrian and Iranian borders with Iraq. One such pass begins around 6:00 a.m. in Iraq, as the aircraft pilot directs the UAV toward the Syrian border using a computer keyboard. It had taken off around 2 p.m. the previous day under the control of a local launch and recovery element at a base near Iraq. Then it collected imagery in central Iraq using the synthetic aperture radar (SAR), including some images of a bomb crater following an improvised explosive device detonation west of Baghdad. Ground troops wanted pictures to see where personnel were scattering after the explosion. *

*En route northward across the Persian Gulf after takeoff, the aircraft had flown autonomously, and control is handed to the Beale-based pilot once the UAV reaches Iraq's southern border. Upon takeoff from the base south of Iraq, officials use code to discuss the UAV's mission--left for Iraq and right for the trip eastward over Pakistan to collect imagery of targets in Afghanistan. *

*Capt. Stephen M., a pilot seated at the Global Hawk Mission Control Element (MCE), a cramped trailer structure here, directs the UAV to the northern tip of Iraq where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Turkey meet, and begins his run; his commands are relayed via satellite communications. He circles the aircraft in a loop to stay just over several miles from the sensitive border. But Global Hawk's onboard electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) and SAR sensors can peer over the border for a variety of activities. When approaching a border run, Global Hawk pilots perform a "90/270 maneuver," whereby they position the aircraft to run along the border without ever directly pointing the UAV's nose at it to avoid any misunderstandings from those on the other side. *

Not everything works perfectly, however, as the article goes on to note:

The
Global Hawk images are electronically delivered in packets, each a so-called tile of area imaged from the ground with the Integrated
Sensor Suite, made by Raytheon. An Enhanced Integrated Sensor Suite is being developed for the larger Block 20 vehicle. The tiles are then stitched together to form a massive image mosaic. The U-2, by contrast, delivers one smooth image covering a larger area. Overlapping areas of a Global Hawk image, where the stitching is visible, at first caused imagery analysts difficulties when they could not distinguish objects in the overlap areas.

As a whole, the article points out that the Global Hawk, while an enormous technological advance, is still working out some of its kinks and awaiting upgrades that will make it more effective. One big advance will be the addition of the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion
Program (MP-RTIP) active electronically scanned array radar. That's not scheduled until 2011, however.