The Pentagon may be preparing to spend more than $4 billion on the Global Hawk UAV.
An Air Force Justification and Approval (J&A) notice on FedBizOpps bestows the Global Hawk program and all of its variants with authority to spend about $4.2 billion through fiscal year 2020. The Global Hawk system consists of the air vehicle segment (Blocks 20, 30, and 40), airborne payloads, ground segment, support services and support segment.
Resource: Read the Justification and Approval document
Huge swaths of the J&A are redacted. But it does state that the funding applies to “additional development, modernization, retrofit, and sustainment activities for all GH variants for FY16 through FY20. This Class J&A provides an avenue for efficient logistical support by transferring systems integration risk and overall responsibility to a single contractor.”
It specifies that the contractor in question is Global Hawk manufacturer Northrop Grumman.
The Global Hawk program has just received Milestone C approval to proceed into the production phase of the program.
