Jay Clemens
Rolls-Royce and the U.S. Air Force have established a maintenance facility for the service branch’s Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma as part of a public-private partnership.
The new depot in Tinker AFB’s Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex will be used to repair and overhaul engines of the Global Hawk fleet through a mix of Rolls-Royce’s management, engineering and logistics services and the Air Force’s repair expertise, the company said Tuesday.
Rolls-Royce expects to repair 10 to 12 engines every year for the Air Force at the depot, which represents the company’s first Oklahoma engine facility built with funding support from the service branch.
The Northrop Grumman-built Global Hawk UAV is powered by Rolls-Royce’s F137/AE 3007H engine technology.
Rolls-Royce completed repair work on the first F137Â engine at the depot and the engine is slated for future testing in a new test cell near the F137 depot.
