The Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, Ga., is slated to receive one of the Air Force’s recently retired RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 10 remotely piloted aircraft. Museum officials intend to put this aircraft in an elevated display in the Century of Flight Hangar. This Global Hawk, aircraft #2011, flew 357 combat sorties for a total of 7,074.4 combat hours, more combat sorties and hours than any other Global Hawk so far. Its last flight was in May when it returned to Beale AFB, Calif., from Southwest Asia. Plans are to bring the Global Hawk on a C-5 transport to Robins Air Force Base, which is adjacent to the museum. The Museum of Aviation is the second museum to obtain a Global Hawk, behind the National Museum of US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. (Museum of Aviation release)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…