UPDATED: BAMS-D Crashes, Burns. No Injuries. PATUXENT RIVER NAVAL AIR STATION: One of the Navy’s Global Hawks crashed and burned during testing about 22 miles from here Monday. The U. S. Coast Guard responded and set up a perimeter around the wreckage of the drone, which the Navy calls BAMS-D, for Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator.… Keep reading →

The U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers flight decks are some of the most chaotic and deadly real estate in the world. Teeming with scores of high-performance aircraft, wheeled vehicles and up to a thousand sailors generating up to several hundred sorties per day, flight decks “are fraught with danger,” the Naval Safety Center warned in… Keep reading →

The past decade has seen an unlikely revival of a long-grounded technology. Military airships, last operational with the U.S. Navy in the 1960s, took back to the skies, propelled by soaring demand for long-endurance, low-cost aerial surveillance in Iraq and Afghanistan. Per flight hour, an airship costs a fraction of what a helicopter or a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The House Armed Services Committee is giving the US Air Force both marching orders and money to operate its eighteen “Block 30” Global Hawk UAVs instead of warehousing them as the service proposed. The Administration’s fiscal 2013 budget request cancelled the Block 30 program and provided no funds to operate the 18 drones already… Keep reading →

The cost of building Virginia-class attack submarines could grow by up to $600 million if Congress signs off on the Navy’s proposal to slip a Virginia from 2014 to 2018. Under heavy pressure to cut budgets, the Navy wants to reduce sub-building expenses in the short term, even at the price of increasing the program’s… Keep reading →

CORRECTED WASHINGTON: The Navy’s venerable Scan Eagle unmanned drone could go global if service leaders can lock in agreements with a number of key European and Mideast allies. Navy leaders are considering foreign military sales of the Scan Eagle to Kuwait, Pakistan and the Netherlands, according to a presentation by Marine Corps Col. James Rector,… Keep reading →

UPDATED WASHINGTON: The Global Hawk is dead. Long live the Global Hawk. Pentagon and service leaders are rumored to be considering reducing or canceling the current version of the venerable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drone. The Block 30 Global Hawk variant will be replaced with the Cold War-era U-2 spy planes. The decision to cut… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy’s premiere combat helicopter and unmanned drone can now operate in tandem during future combat operations after successfully completing initial tests late last year. Officials at Naval Air Systems command were able to link up the Lockheed Martin-built MH-60 Sierra with Northrop Grumman’s Fire Scout unmanned drone during a series of operational evaluations… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy’s newest Fire Scout drone may also become the Marine Corps newest aerial cargo drone if prime contractor Northrop Grumman has its way. The Marines are currently testing Lockheed Martin’s KMAX aerial drone and Boeing’s A160 Hummingbird as potential candidates for the unmanned airlift mission. Naval Air Systems Command recently decided to stop… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: A blockbuster deal to sell the Air Force’s advanced Global Hawk aerial drone to South Korea has been put on ice for now, according to government sources in Seoul. Military leaders from the Asian nation scuttled the nearly $400 to $800 million deal for four Global Hawk aircraft when negotiators from Washington and Seoul… Keep reading →