By MANDY SMITHBERGER
Brendan McGarry and Tony Capaccio from Bloomberg News report that the Pentagon's top tester found that the new version of Northrop Grumman's Q-4B Global Hawk drone is "not operationally effective for conducting near-continuous, persistent" intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions that it was designed to conduct. (Emphasis POGO's)
Read more here and here about how low vehicle reliability renders the drones operationally unsuitable.
This lack of operational effectiveness has not been cheap. The cost overruns in the program have resulted in three Nunn-McCurdy cost breach reviews and the estimated total cost of the program is $8.6 billion.
Read the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation report on RQ-4B Global Hawk Block 30.
Mandy Smithberger is a POGO Investigator.
Image: Mandy Smithberger, based on image by kevinthoule
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