This Massive Military Drone Is Designed To Provide Surveillance In Any Weather – SlashGear

Officially, the Global Hawk has been in service since 2001, according to the United States Air Force, but it was first developed as far back as 1995. As with most surveillance apparatuses, specifics are classified. But it’s safe to say the RQ-4 has been in the skies for a while. In addition to looking flat-out goofy, the Global Hawk also isn’t very fast, topping out at 357 miles per hour. The drone is huge, slow, and doesn’t carry any weapons. So what is it good for? 

The RQ-4 excels in staying out of harm’s way and endurance. It has a ceiling of around 60,000 feet, allowing it to stay safely out of the way of any unfriendly air traffic that might be trying to interfere. It’s also capable of staying in the air for absurd amounts of time. Without refueling, a Global Hawk drone can stay on mission for more than 34 hours. There’s no onboard crew that gets tired, hungry, or bored, so it can stay aloft as long as its engines are still running. It takes three operators on the ground to keep an RQ-4 on the prowl. 

RQ-4s have been used on humanitarian missions to relay information to rescue workers on the ground during the cleanup after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in 2011. On the battlefields of today, the United States Air Force is using multiple Global Hawks to monitor the conflict in Ukraine, keeping at least one RQ-4 in the air ever since Russian forces invaded in 2022.