Northrop Grumman Statement on the Global Hawk Block 30 Program

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion (NYSE:NOC) has released the fol­low­ing state­ment on the Glob­al Hawk Block 30 pro­gram:

“The Pen­ta­gon announced today that it is plan­ning to can­cel the Glob­al Hawk Block 30 pro­gram and plans to per­form this mis­sion with the U‑2 air­craft. Northrop Grum­man is dis­ap­point­ed with the Pentagon’s deci­sion, and plans to work with the Pen­ta­gon to assess alter­na­tives to pro­gram termination. 

“The Glob­al Hawk pro­gram has demon­strat­ed its util­i­ty in U.S. mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as its util­i­ty in human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tions in Japan and Haiti. Just a few months ago, the Pen­ta­gon pub­lished an acqui­si­tion deci­sion mem­o­ran­dum regard­ing Glob­al Hawk Block 30 that stat­ed: ‘The con­tin­u­a­tion of the pro­gram is essen­tial to the nation­al secu­ri­ty… there are no alter­na­tives to the pro­gram which will pro­vide accept­able capa­bil­i­ty to meet the joint mil­i­tary require­ment at less cost.’ 

“Glob­al Hawk is the mod­ern solu­tion to pro­vid­ing sur­veil­lance. It pro­vides long dura­tion per­sis­tent sur­veil­lance, and col­lects infor­ma­tion using mul­ti­ple sen­sors on the plat­form. In con­trast, the aging U‑2 pro­gram, first intro­duced in the 1950s, places pilots in dan­ger, has lim­it­ed flight dura­tion, and pro­vides lim­it­ed sen­sor capac­i­ty. Extend­ing the U‑2’s ser­vice life also rep­re­sents addi­tion­al invest­ment require­ments for that program. 

“Northrop Grum­man is com­mit­ted to work­ing with our cus­tomers to pro­vide the best solu­tions for our coun­try and our allies. We are pleased with the con­tin­u­ing sup­port for the Glob­al Hawk Block 40 sys­tem, as well as for the Navy’s Broad Area Mar­itime Sur­veil­lance sys­tem and our oth­er unmanned systems.” 

Northrop Grum­man is a lead­ing glob­al secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing inno­v­a­tive sys­tems, prod­ucts and solu­tions in aero­space, elec­tron­ics, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, and tech­ni­cal ser­vices to gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial cus­tomers world­wide. Please vis­it www.northropgrumman.com for more information. 

CONTACT: Randy Belote
(703) 280‑2720 office
(443) 994‑1489 mobile
randy.belote@ngc.com

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