Analyst says budget cuts will force Air Force to drop drone program

The U.S. Air Force will end the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned drone in favor of older U-2 planes, a defense analyst said Tuesday.

Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, told The Hill that the Northrop drone was one of the programs that would see the budget ax when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rolls out the first details of the Pentagon 2013 budget Thursday. The Global Hawk drone will be retired in the Air Force, though the Navy variant will remain, Thompson said.

Thompson wrote that cutting the Global Hawk drone, which can travel longer distances than the U-2, does not make sense in the new U.S. military strategy with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

“The Global Hawk far surpasses U-2 and other airborne surveillance systems in a facet of performance deemed crucial to the vast distances of the Pacific: endurance,” Thompson wrote.

The Pentagon is preparing to cut $487 billion from its budget over the next decade, and Panetta will lay out the first details of that plan Thursday.

Reuters, which first reported the drone program cut, said that retiring the drone program would cap Northrop’s Air Force drones at 21 planes, 10 fewer than planned.

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