US Air Force Global Hawk Drones Hunt Russian Targets Over Crimea From Black Sea

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

US Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk drones and other NATO surveillance assets have been circling within surveillance range of the Crimean Peninsula and other parts of Southern Ukraine from the Black Sea as a way to find, transmit or “light up” targets of great significance for Ukrainian forces to attack.

Generally speaking, the Pentagon has been quite open about ongoing US and NATO ISR efforts underway in support of Ukraine’s war effort, yet specifics are often understandably difficult to come by given the importance of security restraints and the need to protect critical US and NATO assets and technologies from Russian attack.

A recent specific incident involving a US Air Force Global Hawk drone near Crimea introduces key points of analysis regarding the continued utility of larger, less-stealthy drones such as the Global Hawk or its maritime variant the Triton. The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it sent one of its Su-27s to confront and “repel” or turn back a US Air Force Global Hawk over the Black Sea within range of Crimea, a situation discussed in a Warrior essay by Managing Editor Mark Episkopos. 

While the Global Hawk is a drone built by Northrop Grumman for the US Air Force, it is also been exported to key US allies such as Japan and other friendly nations in need of surveillance. Therefore, while the Russian Defense Ministry may say suggest or indicate the drone was operated by the US Air Force, that may be less likely as the system can also be operated by a large number of US allies. 

In a general sense, advancing high-tech air defenses such as Russian S-500s and S-400s are a key reason why the Air Force and Pentagon have in recent years been engineering smaller, faster and stealthier drones and working on “drone swarms” able to blanket an area with ISR, build in redundancy and test enemy air defenses with less risk to human pilots.

The incident over the Black Sea, however, suggests a number of key things, such as it verifies or reinforces concepts of operation in which larger, less-stealthy ISR platforms such as the Global Hawk can remain relevant and effective in a “near-peer” threat environment. This is something which has been thought to become increasingly less likely, even leading some to raise the question as to whether the Global Hawk would become obsolete in high-threat environments. The answer appears to be no as there are a number of key nuances, upgrades and adaptations impacting this equation. The US Air Force has made moves to retire older Global Hawks, however it appears upgraded variants continue to prove their tactical and operational value moving into the future, a significant development for a large, less-stealthy drone which debuted 20-years ago during Operation Iraqi Freedom. At that time during OIF, former Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Meyers said the Global Hawk was able perform what he called a “fusion” or advanced networking with other surveillance and attack platforms. This early indication would suggest that the large drone has likely evolved considerably since this time in terms of data processing, target specifics transmission and high-fidelity long range sensing.