In 2014, a U.S.-made unmanned surveillance aircraft to keep a closer watch on North Korea and China seemed a match made in heaven for the Defense Ministry. 

However, seven years later, the proposal has hit turbulence as the Global Hawk Block 30 model envisioned is now deemed by Washington as outdated.

The Self-Defense Forces had planned to introduce the Global Hawk drone starting this fiscal year or later. But the latest developments would seem to indicate that the aircraft now does not appear to fit the purpose.

On top of those, costs of the soon-to-be-mothballed plane could additionally rise as Japan is expected to invest more than 12 billion yen ($109.2 million) in the craft annually over 20 years from now.

On July 21, the U.S. Air Force released its new policy in the draft budget for fiscal 2022 to shortly withdraw all its 20 Block 30 planes from operation.

The withdrawal came because the model’s performance has become inadequate amid the increasingly competitive, tense global situation. A senior Air Force official told a public hearing that Block 30 is not designed to respond to the current threats from Beijing that are facing Washington.

The U.S. Air Force is planning to utilize its 10 Block 40, the latest variant of its Global Hawk.

WON'T SERVE PURPOSE

The Defense Ministry decided to purchase the Global Hawk in November 2014, when boosting monitoring of North Korea was an urgent challenge after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test in 2013.

The ministry was impressed by the high-altitude drone’s “exceptional ability to stay in the air for 36 hours to gather information on areas away from territorial waters and airspace” at a height of 18,000 meters.

Block 30, measuring 40 meters wide and 15 meters long, is designed to be controlled by pilots via specialized equipment set up on the ground through satellite communications.

The unmanned craft was expected to engage in “long-lasting surveillance in emergencies while lightening pilots’ dangers and workload” for photo shooting and electronic intelligence around the archipelago.

“We had China in mind as well,” said a ministry source about the decision. “Keeping watch on many military facilities in the East China Sea and coastal zones on the Chinese continent was another objective for us.”

Equipped with infrared sensors and other devices, the Global Hawk can change how often it takes images of target regions, allowing the drone to work more flexibly to capture non-moving targets on land than intelligence-gathering satellites.

But the aircraft is unable to monitor inland areas, so some ministry officials are skeptical of the drone’s surveillance capabilities.

Despite a ministry executive’s assertion that Block 30 would be of “assistance in monitoring in the event of emergencies,” the U.S. Air Force’s recently announced policy suggests the model is no longer effective in such cases.

“Beijing has been boosting its capability to disrupting enemies with anti-aircraft weapons and electromagnetic waves,” said a source in the Defense Ministry. “Block 30 is not designed to work if menaced by outside forces. It would prove useless in an emergency in the Taiwan Strait.”

Block 30’s vulnerability to attacks makes the issue more complicated. A U.S. military Global Hawk flying near the Gulf of Oman in the Middle East was shot down by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in June 2019.

BALLOONING COSTS

The Defense Ministry allocated 61.3 billion yen through fiscal 2020 for the introduction of three Global Hawks, which will be dispatched to the Air Self-Defense Force’s Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture.

The first and second Global Hawk drones planned for Tokyo were test-flown in the United States in April and June this year, respectively, whereas they should have been deployed to Japan in March 2020 under the initial plan.

“It is still unclear whether the aircraft will be able to be stationed in Japan by the end of fiscal 2021,” said a senior ministry official.

The Defense Ministry expects its Block 30 fleet to remain operational for two decades and estimates that an additional 247.4 billion yen, aside from the introduction cost, will be required for their maintenance and operation during the period.

The United States' move to pull the Block 30 from service may lead to increased financial burden for Tokyo, given that an average of 12 billion yen will be spent each year for as many as 20 years.

“The retiring of the Block 30 could entail increasingly ballooning maintenance and operation costs, as spare parts will become more difficult to procure for maintenance work,” said a Defense Ministry insider.

It previously surfaced that the expected introductory cost for the Global Hawk had risen 23 percent by August 2017 to 62.9 billion yen from the initial estimate of 51 billion yen announced when Block 30’s purchase was decided.

Extra costs to develop components to substitute for their existing counterparts no longer available in the market were cited as the reason.

According to a Defense Ministry notice and other sources, when expensive weaponry’s estimated price rises 15 percent, the purchase plan should be reviewed. With a 25-percent increase, the purchase must be canceled.

The Defense Ministry took into account the possibility of the operating costs increasing further, and concluded that the government and ruling parties should make adjustments to drop the plan to incorporate the Global Hawk.

But then Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera overruled the recommendation so that efforts would continue toward the aircraft’s introduction.

The procurement of the Global Hawk came under the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, which allows the Defense Ministry to buy military ordnance directly from the United States.

The FMS framework has been criticized as a source of mounting costs unlike in purchases through trading houses because the ministry must accept the amount submitted by the United States.

“Despite problems involving the FMS program, a political decision to introduce the drone was made out of consideration to the U.S. side,” said a ministry source. “The same issue as in the case of the Aegis Ashore ground-to-air missile defense system has arisen again.”