Global Hawk in Philippine disaster relief efforts

The USAF used the UAV to provide surveillance capabilities during relief efforts, collecting and disseminating electro-optical (EO) imagery to US and Philippine authorities to assist with infrastructure and damage assessments. The imagery was also used to aid in the logistical assessments of roads, airports and fields to help relief teams swiftly reach displaced survivors.

The Global Hawk flew three sorties from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam to the Philippines and back on 14, 16 and 20 November. In total, the aircraft collected approximately 1,000 planned images and a number of ad hoc collections on each sortie.

Jim Culmo, vice president, high altitude long endurance enterprise, Northrop Grumman, said: ‘Mission planning in a crisis is hard, but having the ability to task and retask Global Hawk gives commanders the flexibility to conduct productive ISR missions that feed near real-time information to the response teams who need it the most.’

Global Hawk has supported humanitarian missions including the 2007 Southern California wild fires; the 2010 Haiti earthquake;  and the UAV collected data and imagery within the radiation zones over the Fukushima power plant following Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. 

Global Hawk has also logged more than 100,000 flight hours and has been used over battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

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Philippines says no to US drone strikes

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines is allowing US drones to conduct reconnaissance flights over its territory but strikes from the unmanned planes are banned, President Benigno Aquino III said Tuesday.

"For reconnaissance," Aquino told Agence France-Presse in an interview when asked if US drones were operating in the southern Philippines where hundreds of American troops have been helping to contain an Islamic militant threat for a decade.

When asked whether the Philippines would allow, or had allowed, US drones to drop bombs, Aquino said that would violate a ban on the American forces from participating in combat operations.

"No drone strikes," he said.

Aquino said the US forces had been following the bilateral agreement that restricted them to training.

"They are here as advisers. They are here as trainers. They can not participate in combat operations," he said.

The US forces arrived in the southern Philippines in early 2002 as part of the US government's global "war on terror".

One key focus of their mission has been to help the Philippine military deal with the threat of the Abu Sayyaf group, a small band of Islamic militants set up in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.

The number of Abu Sayyaf fighters has dropped from roughly 2,000 a decade ago to a few hundred today, according to security analysts.

However they remain a threat in the south, capable of kidnapping locals and foreigners, as well as bomb attacks, partly due to support from members of local Muslim communities.

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Agence France-Presse | Interaksyon.Com | March 20, 2012 | Article Link