Check out this story, and a picture of the Global Hawk UAV that returned from the war zone on Monday (February 13th 2006) under its own power. (Iraq to Edwards AFB in CA) - Not transported via C5 or C17..... Notice the mission paintings on the fuselage. It's actually over 250 missions.... (and I would suppose 25 air medals).
That's a long way for a remotely-piloted aircraft. Think of the technology (and the required quality of the data link to fly it remotely). The pilot controlled it from a nice warm control panel at Edwards AFB.
Quote from someone on the Global Hawk Team on the e-mail chain
Les- I worked on Global Hawk several years ago during its OT&E out of Edwards. It has really long legs- can stay up for almost 2 days at altitudes above 60k. They flew it via satellite control to Australia, and we flew missions during OT&E that went from Eddy to upper Alaska and back non-stop. I also got the chance to work as pilot de-briefer and test evaluator on the FA-22 OT&E summer before last at EDW. I was totally blown away by the airplane. Unless you have ever watched them go 2 or 4 V many on the big electronic game board, you have no idea what stealth brings to the battle. Basically, they come into the fight at a high mach # in mil thrust, start killing people way out with AMRAAMS, and continue doing that until everyone is dead, and no one ever sees them or paints them on radar. There is practically no radio chatter because all the guys in the flight are tied together electronically, and can see who is targeting who, and they have AWACS direct input and 360°situational awareness from that and other sensors. The aggressors had a morale problem before it was all over. The only shots that I ever saw taken on a 22 were when someone screwed up and popped up high enough to leave a contrail. I went in a skeptic and came out a true believer. It is to air superiority what the jet engine was to aviation.
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