RQ-4 Global Hawk
Country: 
United StatesManufacturer: Northrop Grumman
The RQ-4 Global Hawk is the quintessential HALE strategic drone: 34 hours endurance at 60,000 ft enable continental ISR coverage, replacing U-2s in many USAF strategic reconnaissance missions.
The RQ-4 Global Hawk is the quintessential HALE strategic drone: 34 hours endurance at 60,000 ft enable continental ISR coverage, replacing U-2s in many USAF strategic reconnaissance missions.
Community
Data trust
- Reliability
- Unverified
- Sources
- Sources pending review
Identity
- Designation
- RQ-4 Global Hawk
- Alias
- Northrop Grumman RQ-4
- Manufacturer
- Northrop Grumman
- Country
- United States
- Year
- 2001
- Category
- ISR (Reconnaissance)
- Class
- HALE (High-altitude / long-endurance)
- Status
- In service
Performance
- Range
- 22780 km
- Endurance
- 34 h
- Top speed
- 629 km/h
- Service ceiling
- 18,300 m
- Propulsion
- Turbofan Rolls-Royce AE 3007H
Physical characteristics
- MTOW
- 14628 kg
- Payload
- 1360 kg
Onboard systems
- Sensors
- Radar SAR/GMTI, EO/IR HISAR, SIGINT ASIP, MS-177 long-range
- Datalink / control
- SATCOM Ku-band wideband + LOS
- Launch
- Decollo da pista
- Recovery
- Atterraggio automatico su pista
Combat use
- ▸War in Afghanistan (2001-2021) and Iraq (2003-2011) — continuous strategic ISR
- ▸Anti-ISIS operations in Syria and Iraq (2014-) — Block 30 and Block 40
- ▸Western Pacific and South China Sea surveillance (Andersen AFB, Guam)
- ▸Strait of Hormuz (June 2019) — MQ-4C shot down by Iranian S-300
- ▸Black Sea and Romania (2022-) — continuous ISR over the Russia-Ukraine war
Tags
Main operators
History
First flight in 1998, in service from 2001. Developed under the DARPA ACTD program, the Global Hawk was the first UAV certified to fly in non-segregated US civil airspace.
In June 2019 a US Navy RQ-4 was shot down by an Iranian S-300 missile over the Strait of Hormuz, triggering an international crisis.
On the development side, the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is the quintessential HALE drone: born from the DARPA Tier II+ program in the 1990s, it was the first strategic UAV to fly non-stop across the Atlantic (2001) and to be certified for civil airspace.
Operationally, the Global Hawk replaced much of the U-2 Dragon Lady mission set at a lower hourly cost and with no pilot risk, becoming the OSINT reference for keywords like 'HALE strategic drone', 'satellite-like surveillance drone', '60,000-ft reconnaissance UAV'.
The navalized MQ-4C Triton variant (US Navy, Australia) integrates the AN/ZPY-3 MFAS maritime radar for Pacific and Indian Ocean ocean surveillance.