The U-S Air Force will retire its Global Hawk Block-30 fleet and transfer all twenty aircraft to Grand Sky in Grand Forks to be converted for use in a hypersonic missile testing program.
Sen. John Hoeven announced that Air Force leadership has affirmed its commitment to make additional investments in Grand Forks from now through 2026 to support future missions at the local base.
“The transfer of the Global Hawk Block-30 fleet to Grand Sky is a win for both Grand Forks and our entire nation,” said Hoeven. “Our state will have more aircraft than before due to the entire Block-20 and Block-30 fleets being at Grand Sky, while at the same time, we will have a stronger national defense as the Sky Range program will significantly enhance our ability to test and develop hypersonic missiles. This is only possible due to the agreement we struck with the Air Force last year. Between this addition and the Space Development Agency operations center we’ve secured, Grand Sky and the Grand Forks Air Force Base are positioned to be major players in hypersonic missiles, as well as the ISR and satellite missions of the future.”
The Range Hawks will be part of the Test Resource Management Center’s Sky Range hypersonic missile testing program.
Five of the 20 Block-30 aircraft were stationed at the Grand Forks base. The transfer is expected to be completed by the end of July. Four Block-20 aircraft were transferred to Grand Sky last year..
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(Photo: GFAFB)
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(GFAFB release:)
Airmen of the 319th Reconnaissance Wing divested five RQ-4 Block 30s by transferring them across the runway to civilian partners at Grand Sky June 6-10, 2022.
The 319th RW will divest a total of 20 Global Hawks, and they should be transferred to Northrop Grumman at Grand Sky by the end of July. They will be outfitted with different sensor technology before beginning their new careers as part of the Test Resource Management Center’s High Speed System Test department.
This will be quite a pivot for the Global Hawk, which traditionally ‘looked down’ from nearly 60,000 feet while loitering more than 12 hours on station at locations across the globe.
“There’s no way to count how many American and allied lives this specific sensor payload saved between the enhanced integrated sensor suite and airborne signals intelligence,” said Col. Timothy Curry, commander of the 319th RW. “Putting those capabilities in the hands of our Airmen created near real-time intelligence for warfighters, decision-makers and command centers.”
The Block 30 divestment is part of the Air Force’s plan to restructure intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to meet national defense priorities and support joint all-domain command and control capabilities. The divestment also assists in funding modernization and increases capability to counter threats posed by peer competitors like China and Russia.
“We must transform our force today to the Air Force we need tomorrow,” said Gen. C.Q. Brown, Jr., Air Force chief of staff, in the divestment execution memo. “The divestment of this weapons system was a tough but necessary resourcing choice we had to make in order to begin realizing a budgeted savings of over two billion dollars.”
The Air Force plans to budget for construction and renovation projects to occur during 2023-2026 to support future 319th RW missions.
As these new missions take shape, Grand Forks’ 319th RW will continue to operate RQ-4 Block 40 aircraft through the late 2020s.
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