COMMUNITY HAS EYES ON HAWK; GROUPS WANT PLANE BASED AT EDWARDS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley's civic community showed up in force to make a pitch to bring an unmanned spy plane program, and its 400 to 800 jobs, to Edwards Air Force Base.

More than 125 people attended an Air Force meeting Monday night to voice their support for bringing the Global Hawk program to Edwards. Edwards is one of five sites being considered by the Air Force as the home base of the spy planes.

``We pretty well tried to cover every aspect of life,'' said Alis Clausen, a Antelope Valley Board of Trade representative who helped arrange speakers for the meeting. ``We had a very, very good showing of support from every aspect of the community. It shows how much the community supports the military and supports the base.''

On hand for the meeting were representatives from every level of government, including the state Trade and Commerce Agency; the cities of Palmdale, Lancaster, California City and Tehachapi; the unincorporated communities of Rosamond and Mojave; and the counties of Kern and Los Angeles.

There were also representatives from various chambers of commerce and economic development organizations, such as the East Kern Economic Alliance and the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance.

The Air Force held the meeting to identify potential issues, including social and economic concerns, that will need to be studied in an environmental assessment for the project. Similar meetings were held at each potential site for the program, but none had the turnout of the Antelope Valley session.

Also competing for the program are Beale Air Force Base in Northern California, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

The exact number of Global Hawk aircraft to be built has not been determined, but the Air Force wants to have at least 18 primary aircraft available for missions. The service could ultimately place as many as 60 aircraft at whatever base is selected for the program's home.

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 30 hours at a time. Controlled by onboard computers, the aircraft will be able to survey 40,000 square miles, an area the size of Illinois.

The Antelope Valley already houses both the assembly of the Global Hawk aircraft, at Air Force Plant 42, and the flight test program, located at Edwards.

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Photo: (color) The unmanned Global Hawk spy plane is operated by onboard computers.