Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) announced the U.S. Air Force has granted the RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) a military Airworthiness Certification (AWC), a significant milestone in the life of the aircraft system and a step on the path to routine unmanned flight within the United States. The AWC process verifies an aircraft design has met performance requirements within the mission profile to safely fly in national airspace and assures operators and mission managers that the production articles conform to the design. In granting the certification to RQ-4, the next generation of Block 20 and 30 Global Hawk UAS, the U.S. Air Force has recognized the aircraft's ability to routinely fly safely within design parameters. The certification process evaluated more than 600 airworthiness criteria.

"This was a more rigorous and more complete evaluation than that of any other unmanned system," said George Guerra, vice president of HALE systems for Northrop Grumman. "With this historic accomplishment and more than 35,000 total flight hours, most of that time in combat support over the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan, Global Hawk continues to be a trailblazer in UAS certifications and a pathfinder supporting our men and women overseas in combat." Just as commercial aircraft are certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), military aircraft are evaluated against certain criteria including durability, capability to adjust to sudden changes in aerodynamic forces, and redundancies of systems and subsystems. Without this Air Force certification, the FAA cannot grant permission to fly within the United States, which is the next step in the on-going process to accept the routine flight of unmanned aircraft in the national airspace.