The south korea news agency Yonhap reported Republic of Korea Air Force(Daehanminguk Gong-gun) is pushing to deploy its first advanced unmanned aircraft Global Hawk within this year. South Korea brought in the RQ-4 Block 30 Global Hawk Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) and has been working to put it in operation. A reconnaissance squadron was established in charge of the asset that month. Under a 2011 deal with the United States, South Korea purchased four units. The remaining three had been expected to arrive here in the first half of this year, but the schedule is not fixed. The type’s service entry has yet to be decided, and there will be no announcement when this takes place.
South Korea selected the Global Hawk in 2011, and in December 2014 Northrop Grumman was awarded over $657 million by the US Department of Defense for the project. The sale was made under the auspices of the US government’s Foreign Military Sales programme. First aircraft delivered on 23 December 2019. Republic of Korea Air Force is placing an increasingly heavy emphasis on Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR). Existing requirements include a new Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) programme and two additional airborne early warning & control (AEW&C) aircraft.
The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is a high-altitude remotely-piloted surveillance aircraft. It was initially designed by Ryan Aeronautical (now part of Northrop Grumman), and known as Tier II+ during development. The Global Hawk performs duties similar to that of the Lockheed U-2. The RQ-4 provides a broad overview and systematic surveillance using high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and long-range electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors with long loiter times over target areas. It can survey as much as 40,000 square miles (100,000 km2) of terrain a day, an area the size of South Korea or Iceland.
