Grand Forks Air Force Base sets new unit flight record for Global Hawks

May 10—GRAND FORKS — A new airframe and unit record has been set at Grand Forks Air Force Base following six months of work into finding ways to reduce fuel burn and increase flight time for the unmanned Global Hawk.

The record of 34.8 hours in flight was set by the 348th Reconnaissance Squadron on April 3. Mission planner Maj. Ryan Blakeney said this new record was exciting to see and a creative change in how things have been done in the past with the aircraft.

"We decided to go against the grain and find a better way to do something that's been done for 20 straight years," he said.

The flight was conducted from Grand Forks Air Force Base using an RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 40, an unmanned airframe and one of many the base controls. The Global Hawk took off from the base and went across North Dakota and Minnesota before coming back, flown continuously by 14 pilots who took turns controlling the craft.

A Global Hawk is a high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft with a massive wingspan, powered by a Rolls-Royce engine, said Lea Greene, public affairs chief at the base. The Block 40 uses the most updated technology, including a ground moving target indicator, something only present in the Block 40. The indicator turns any movement on the ground into a series of dots, which intelligence analysts can use to determine patterns and see if anything unusual is happening, she said. The Global Hawk flies at approximately 50,000 feet and goes over areas a manned aircraft wouldn't be sent.

The purpose of the record-setting flight was to test theories made by Blakeney and other airmen on how to keep the Hawk in the air longer, using fuel slower and allowing missions to stretch farther. Blakeney and his team did data collection for six months and collected three months' worth of flight data from different aircrafts flying in different parts of the world to see how atmosphere, winds and temperatures from around the globe could impact flight time. The kinds of engines and paint used in the aircraft, they found, impact their ability to climb. Averaging things out, Blakeney's team determined a style of tactics, techniques and procedure (TTP) to get the longest endurance for the Global Hawk.

To verify the results, Blakeney wanted to make the test as baseline as possible, bringing in new pilots and whoever was available on schedule, including himself. In total, 14 pilots took part in the test. Part of the new TTP involved groups of small climbs at short intervals, different from the traditionally longer-duration climbs.

Blakeney was concerned once in the Hawk was in the air due to the heavy fuel burning done at the beginning of the flight; after the first 10 hours, he wasn't confident, he said. After going to sleep and coming back 12 hours later, he found the fuel burn had been about cut in half, and he could project from there the flight would exceed the record, previously set at 34.4 hours, a flight dubbed "Lady Hawk" conducted by an all-female crew of the 348th Reconnaissance Squadron on March 29, 2014, in recognition of Women's History Month. The new record also surpasses Northrop Grumman's official Federation Aeronautique Internationale March 2001 record of a 30-hour, 24-minute flight with an earlier RQ-4 Global Hawk model, though Greene said the squadron wasn't able to register that flight as an official record.

The same day, Blakeney, as the director of operations, immediately implemented the TTP in other Global Hawk flights. Grand Forks Air Force Base flies all the Global Hawks across the world in places such as Italy, Guam and Japan. Blakeney said there's always a Hawk flying somewhere, so the entire squadron is already using the new techniques to get longer flights.

Blakeney said this success was entirely due to the work of people, not any new piece of technology.

"I've been in the program for about 10 years, and the biggest thing that I've noticed is we don't normally get new stuff for this aircraft, and so we have found ways to be creative with what we have and we're able to find better ways to use what exists with the platform over the course of time," he said. "Nothing new has arrived. We didn't acquire a new widget to make it better. The people are the ones that have taken this Play-Doh and molded it to a different way of making it better for the aircraft."