South Korea to Buy Four Global Hawks for $1.2 Billion

The U.S. Defense Department proposed selling South Korea four Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft made by Northrop Grumman Corp. in an order valued at $1.2 billion.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said recently that it notified Congress of the proposed sale, which includes infra-red and electro-optical sensors, imagery analysis systems and moving target indicators on board the Global Hawk Block-30 unmanned aircraft.

The proposed sale would be the first order in the Asia- Pacific region for the high-altitude unmanned  surveillance aircraft that have been used by the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia, which has expressed an interest in buying the aircraft since 2008, has yet to place an order.

Wes Bush, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of  Northrop Grumman, has been advocating easing U.S. export restrictions to enable foreign sales of the drones. Earlier this year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed to buy five Global Hawks.

The Pentagon has proposed cancelling the Block-30 version of the Global Hawk. Its fiscal 2013 budget proposal called for truncating purchases of the aircraft and putting those it had already bought into storage to save $2.5 billion over five years. The Pentagon sought to continue buying the more advanced Block-40 model instead.

Congress disagreed with that plan, and the final version of this year’s defense authorization bill, approved this month, would block the Air Force from retiring the Block-30 aircraft at least until the end of 2014.

Photo: Global Hawk at media preview of the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition 2011 in Seongnam, South Korea. Credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

Source: Bloomberg

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