My friend and former colleague Joe Pappalardo, now at Popular Mechanics, wrote an interesting piece about the recent official unveiling of the EuroHawk (the European derivative of the Global Hawk) at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. You can read it here.
It looks like the Germans could buy up to four EuroHawks in 2011. Why the fanfare? Check out Joe's analysis.
Germany is so far the only country to have selected a UAV as a SIGINT platform - I presume on cost grounds. Had there been the financial resources, AGS would have also included manned Airbus 321s to provide wider surveillance coverage than the Global Hawk will provide. So apart from EuroHawk's endurance time, is it as significant as the article argues? Not in the way it has been described - other than providing a largely unique and untried way of providing SIGINT, and being the largest UAV that will operate in European airspace. The Global Hawk will also provide NATO with an entirely new capability. The EuroHawk and AGS programme is obviously significant for Northrop Grumman as it marks the first export sales of the Global Hawk, hence partly the fanfare, and it is more cheaper than a more capable manned system, which still remains the favoured option among many states, even when money is very tight.
EuroHawk and Global Hawk will provide a niche capability for NATO and Germany, but one that will still need complementary manned aircraft to provide battlefield surveillance that is still likely to need US resources for a while yet. Also, the first EuroHawk is due to enter Luftwaffe service in 2011 with the remaining four EuroHawks not due to be delivered for another five-six years after that, well after AGS comes into service. As a result, much of integration, operational procedures, training etc, assuming that AGS arrrives on time, will be done at the same time rather than one being a trailblazer for the other.