Global Hawk Unit 1 to be Deployed on First Mission This October

[Asia Economy Reporter Yang Nak-gyu] The Republic of Korea Air Force's high-altitude unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, the "Global Hawk" (RQ-4) Unit 1, will be deployed on its first mission this coming October. Following North Korea's launch of nine projectiles in four separate events last month, the plan is to prioritize the deployment of Global Hawk Unit 1 to independently collect video intelligence from deep within North Korean territory.

According to the military on the 3rd, Global Hawk Unit 1 arrived at the Air Force base in Sacheon, Gyeongnam Province, last December. One Global Hawk set consists of four aircraft. The Air Force plans to acquire the remaining three units before September this year. Units 2 through 4, produced in the United States, are currently undergoing software modifications related to the braking system and are in test flight stages. Repairs on the all-weather synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which had experienced defects, are also nearing completion. The video intelligence processing system (target imaging → interpretation → information transmission), which will analyze the video intelligence collected by the Global Hawk, is expected to arrive next month.

The Air Force completed the "Global Hawk (RQ-4) Operation Manual" at the end of last year to prepare for the operational deployment of Global Hawk Unit 1. However, the Global Hawk is considered vulnerable to attacks from North Korea's surface-to-air missiles such as the SA-5 (Gammon, with a maximum range of 260?300 km). Accordingly, the Air Force plans to supplement the operation manual based on operational experience gained from the first deployment in October.

Additionally, pilot and maintenance crew training will be completed before October to enable the Global Hawk's operational deployment. In September 2018, the military signed a Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) contract worth $53.8 million (approximately 59.1 billion KRW) with Northrop Grumman, the manufacturer of the Global Hawk. According to the contract, Northrop Grumman will dispatch 28 employees to Korea to develop training manuals and complete maintenance technical support and training by October this year.

The Global Hawk does not have signal collection equipment. To compensate, the military plans to utilize reconnaissance aircraft such as Geumgang and Baekdu (RC-800), and Saemae (RF-16). The RF-16, nicknamed "Saemae," flies near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and Northern Limit Line (NLL) to collect video intelligence related to North Korean forces. The Baekdu reconnaissance aircraft, upgraded in 2017, can capture North Korean electronic intelligence (Elint) and communications intelligence (Comint), detecting equipment operations such as radar activation and the content of wired and wireless communications.