BUILDING SPY PLANES PALMDALE PLANT CENTER OF ATTENTION FOR UMANNED AIRCRAFT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - In a seven-acre building that used to house part of the B-2 bomber production, a handful of workers are building spy planes that need no pilots and jet aircraft that are meant to be blown apart.

Northrop Grumman's Ryan Aeronautical Center dedicated Site 3 at Air Force Plant 42 Tuesday as its production center for unmanned aircraft, bringing together under one roof production of spy planes and target drones that used to be built in plants in San Diego, Hawthorne and Mexico.

``We wanted to consolidate in one location,'' said Ryan spokeswoman Cynthia Curiel. ``We will continue to do design work in San Diego, but production work will be done in Palmdale.''

Work at Site 3 began in April with the arrival of the production team of the Global Hawk, an unmanned spy plane being developed for the Air Force. Assembly of two target drones, BQM-74/Chukar and BQM-34 Firebee began in Palmdale this summer.

Northrop Grumman acquired the programs when it bought San Diego-based Ryan Aeronautics from Teledyne-Ryan in 1999.

For now, the production center is comprised of 45 workers, a mixture of Ryan workers transferred from San Diego, former B-2 stealth bomber workers, and workers formerly out of Northrop Grumman's Hawthorne plant.

Projecting how large the workforce could become is impossible, Ryan officials said, because there are too many unknowns.

For example, the Pentagon is still trying to determine how many Global Hawk aircraft it wants and how many Miniature Air-Launched Decoys - another possible product for the Palmdale plant - should be built.

For now, the company is focusing on getting workers trained and preparing itself to ready to go when production numbers and contracts are finalized, said Al Nikolaus, site manager.

The most publicized project for the plant is the Global Hawk, an unmanned spy plane with a bulbous nose and an enormous wingspan.

Shorter than an F-16, but with the wingspan of a Boeing 737, the Global Hawk is designed to fly as high as 65,000 feet and stay there for up to 36 hours at a time. Controlled by onboard computers, the aircraft will be able to survey 40,000 square miles, an area the size of Illnois.

Tom Ripley, a worker on the aircraft, described it as being ``ugly enough that it grows on you.''

``It's a fantastic piece of machinery,'' said Ripley, who has worked for Ryan for 18 years. ``People can't believe an airplane of that size flies itself.''

The company has built five Global Hawk aircraft so far. One was lost in a crash during a flight test. The other four are undergoing flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base.

Two more Global Hawk aircraft are now in the early stages of production in Palmdale. A crew of about 15 people are handbuilding the aircraft, which each take about a year to complete.

The BQM-34 Firebee is used to simulate aircraft and missiles for military target practice. With a shape that looks like a design out of NASA's X-plane days of the 1950s, the Firebee is capable of flying at close to the speed of sound and can perform high g-force turns, like a fighter aircraft.

The Firebee is used by the Air Force, Navy and Army for training.

The smaller BQM-74 is used by the Navy to simulate enemy aircraft and missiles. The drone is capable of flying at speeds of about 600 mph and can reach altitudes of 40,000 feet.

Two projects the company plans to eventually bring to Palmdale are the small, missile-like Minature Air-Launched Decoy and the Fire Scout, a small, unmanned helicopter that the Navy and Marine Corps want to use to track targets.

The Minature Air-Launched Decoys will be used by the Air Force to confuse enemy air defense systems by acting like attacking fighter jets. The 93-inch-long aircraft will be able to fly itself and will be capable of making fighter-like dives, climbs and turns.

The Fire Scout is intended to fly for more than six hours and will use electro-optical and infrared sensors to find targets and rely information on their location to weapon systems.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color in AV edition only) Workers at Northrop Grumman's Ryan Aeronautical Center, where Global Hawk and other unmaaned aircraft are built, construct an Air Force on the Globla Hawk.

(2 -- color in AV edition only) Painter Ken Forsberg sands a BQM-74 target drone at the Palmdale plant.

(3 -- ran in AV edition only) Engineer Technician Tom Ripley works on the Global Hawk pannels at the Northrop Grumman Ryan Aeronautical Center.

(4) Structural mechanic Roy Kinman works on a BQM-74E target drone.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer