Pacific Hawk

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, GUAM -- Senior leaders from U.S Pacific Air Forces and their industry counterparts yesterday commemorated the latest addition to PACAF's arsenal, the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft.

PACAF commander Gen. Gary North said the addition of the Global Hawk to the command's inventory represented a larger effort within PACAF and U.S. Pacific Command to “modernize and integrate” next-generation intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities into the greater Pacific region.

The formal inclusion of the RQ-4 into PACAF's toolkit will also assist in “minimizing . . . the tyranny of distance,” which remains a significant challenge in planning operations in the Pacific, he said. The aircraft is the first of three Global Hawks command officials hope to acquire.

The RQ-4 will “improve our ability to support a number of regional missions,” from disaster response to counterterrorism operations, while providing “a proven ISR capability to our combatant commanders,” the PACAF chief added.

The command and control for PACAF's first Global Hawk will be split between the 36th Air Wing and ISR operators at Beale AFB, CA. Aircrews stationed at Andersen AFB, Guam, will carry out takeoff and landing ops for the RQ-4, while remotely piloted aircraft operators stationed at Beale will fly the actual ISR missions, as tasked by 13th Air Force, which has command-and-control authority for all PACOM air operations, North said.

Once PACAF acquires the two other RQ-4 aircraft, the three RPAs will result in a single combat air patrol (CAP) that can provide 24-hour aerial surveillance capability, he added.

“This is truly a total force effort,” North said, adding that aside from coordinating Global Hawk missions across Andersen, Beale and 13th Air Force's headquarters at Hickam AFB, HI, PACAF officials would also look to synchronize the RQ-4 mission intro the various manned and unmanned operations across the command.

The selection of Andersen AFB as the home of the first Global Hawk detachment put those aircraft squarely in the middle of PACAF's “strategic triangle,” between Hickam AFB and Kadena Air Base, Japan, the PACAF chief said.

“If you look at the Pacific, [Guam] is the perfect place to bed down a platform with this capacity, that enables us to fly missions north, south, east and west in an equidistant environment,” he added.

However, North noted the basing decision for the Global Hawk detachment, and the overall decision to deploy the RPA to PACOM, was not made in response to any specific threat or actions taken by potential adversaries in the region, such as China and North Korea.

Rather, the inclusion of the Global Hawk into PACOM operations simply “complements” other regional ISR efforts in support of “global mission requirements,” according to North.

“The decision to deploy [the Global Hawk] enables us . . . to be able to compete in our farthest U.S. territory . . . to not only meet our national requirements, but the requirements of our friends, allies and partners,” he said. “This platform . . . is a natural evolution in modernization of our ISR equipment and capacity.”