The Air Force recently awarded Northrop Grumman a contract valued at more than $71 million to complete the delivery of the RQ-4 Global Hawk remotely piloted aircraft and sensors procured in the airplane’s 10th production lot, announced the company on Tuesday. Those deliveries are scheduled for completion by the end of 2014, according to the company’s April 9 release. George Guerra, Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk vice president, said this contract award will cover the “engineering support for the production and final acceptance testing of the Lot 10 aircraft and sensors.” During Lot 10, the company will supply two Block 30 air vehicles fitted with an electro-optical/infrared camera suite and electronic eavesdropping sensors; two Block 40 aircraft carrying the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program sensor; and three electronic eavesdropping sensor packages for retrofit on Global Hawks purchased in previous production lots, states the release. The Air Force had proposed divesting its fleet of Global Hawk Block 30 airplanes in Fiscal 2013, but Congress mandated that the service operate this Global Hawk variant through 2014. (See also Implementation Plan Details Force Structure Changes.)
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.