A US Air Force Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk strategic reconnaissance drone has been spotted in the airspace over Ukraine, which has been patrolling the border with Russia for about a day. According to Flightradar data, the reconnaissance aircraft operates in the air from Crimea to Kharkov. It has already flown several times over Khmelnitsky, Ternopil, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Kiev, flew along the Donbass and the northern borders of the Crimean peninsula. The flight takes place at an altitude of more than 17 kilometers, and the speed is almost 480 kilometers per hour.

According to military expert Oleksandr Yermakov, the high-altitude reconnaissance drone RQ-4 Global Hawk has been flying over the territory of Ukraine since 2014. He especially carefully examines the line of contact with the DPR and LPR.

“They are dangling from Sicily, there is a base for both American and European drones. He has a very long range. The flight can be more than a day. What he collects depends on what kind of target equipment he has. She is changing. But in general, this is specific intelligence, electronic. It flies at an altitude of 16-18 km. He has a huge overview, he sees with a large margin what is outside the border. He has quite stable observation tens of kilometers from his flight path. He is probably now watching the current grouping of troops, the progress of the exercises in Belarus, ”explained Yermakov.

The Global Hawk is known to be equipped with the HISAR Integrated Surveillance and Reconnaissance System. The complex includes a SAR / MTI radar, as well as optical and infrared sensors. All three subsystems can work simultaneously, and their data is processed by a single processor. Digital data can be transmitted to the ground in real time within line-of-sight or via a satellite link at speeds up to 50 Mbps.

The radar has the ability to detect ground moving objects and transmit information about such objects (coordinates and speed) in text messages.

bbabo.Net