$555,600,000
— The maximum value of a contract the Air Force announced Monday, here, that it is awarding to Northrup Grumman for “Global Hawk modernization.” That’s more than a half-billion dollars for a not-very-old RQ-4 spy drone. “The tasks on each delivery or task order will fall into, but are not limited to, the following categories: management, including program, business and technical areas; engineering efforts, including configuration management, data management, reliability, availability & maintainability, and related areas of concern such as technical refresh, diminishing manufacturing sources, etc.; studies and analyses; design, development, integration, test and evaluation; retrofit requirements; and integrated logistics support.” Truly: the sky is the limit.
