Guam-based Global Hawks return home after spending another typhoon season in Japan

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Four RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones returned to Guam this week after spending the summer flying out of the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo, according to Pacific Air Forces.

The 319th Reconnaissance Wing aircraft — along with about 20 service members and 100 civilians from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam — operated from Yokota for the past three months to avoid extreme weather in the western Pacific.

“Our squadron of Global Hawks safely and flawlessly executed each mission daily, virtually unnoticed, without incident,” Col. Ben Craycraft, 319th Operations Group Detachment 1 commander, said in a statement Monday.

The drones routinely relocate to Japan to avoid typhoons in Guam and the nearby Northern Mariana Islands, which include Saipan, Tinian and Rota. Last year saw 35 storms, including seven super typhoons, blow across the western Pacific. One of those, Yutu, the second strongest typhoon to ever hit a U.S. state or territory since record keeping began in 1958, devastated Saipan and Tinian in October. Months earlier, Super Typhoon Wutip brushed by Guam at 161 mph and interrupted the Cope North exercise at Andersen.

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