Weeks before a Global Hawk sortie, waypoints that the aircraft will follow need to be coded into the aircraft’s mission plan. The report states that back in 2015, the commander of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing requested 100 percent command, control, and communication (C3) coverage, though that guidance was not followed by the 348th RS in this mishap and Air Combat Command determined that since 2015, similar flights occurred with known and “acceptable gaps” of C3 coverage.

Before the crash, the pilot glided toward Rota for almost an hour. The pressurized oil line, which feeds the aircraft’s accessory gear box, failed under high cycle fatigue, according to the report.Īdditionally, the unit’s approved mission plan did not have sufficient emergency divert airfields, according to the report. The AIB determined that an oil line in the engine cracked, causing it to quickly leak oil and cause an uncommanded engine shutdown. While the incident occurred in June 2018, Air Combat Command convened the Accident Investigation Board to find the cause of the crash in August 2019. Once recovered, all components were shipped back to Grand Forks for the investigation. air and naval assets, along with contracted private submarines, searched for more than a month to recover the aircraft’s engine, fuselage, and other parts, which were strewn across an 11-nautical-mile area of the sea.

The RQ-4 and its sensor system was destroyed, at a cost of $98.83 million. The pilot glided on auxiliary power for almost an hour before determining the aircraft could not make it to the airfield and decided to ditch the Global Hawk off the coast, according to an Air Combat Command Accident Investigation Board report released July 7. Twenty-six minutes later, the aircraft’s engine shut down and the pilot tried to divert to Naval Station Rota, Spain.

About 11 hours and 49 minutes into the flight, the aircraft began showing engine fault codes, indicating low oil quantity and low oil pressure. The RQ-4B, tail number 09-2041, operated by the 348th Reconnaissance Squadron at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., was deploying to U.S. A leak in a cracked oil line caused an RQ-4’s engine to fail during a ferry flight to the Middle East in June 2018, and because the operations aircrews did not properly plan divert airfields en route, the Global Hawk crashed into the sea near Spain, according to an Air Force investigation.

Gear of war 4 crash crack