EDWARDS, 4 OTHER BASES VIE FOR ROBOT SPY PLANE.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

DAYTON, Ohio - Edwards Air Force Base has competition from four other bases from Ohio to South Dakota in its bid to become home to a fleet of high-flying, unmanned spy planes called Global Hawks that would bring 500 to 800 jobs with them.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio is one of the five bases in the running, along with Ellsworth in South Dakota, Tinker in Oklahoma, and Edwards and Beale in California, according to Lt. Col. Pat Bolibrzuch, Global Hawk program manager.

Ohio's congressional delegation has pressed the Air Force to select Wright-Patterson, from which the program is managed.

``There is a certain cachet to having a flying mission at an Air Force base,'' said Michael Gesse, press secretary to Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio. ``Having this particular mission located at the base is a prestigious item because it is a highly visible new mission and it fits in with the high-tech image of the base.''

There are currently four Global Hawks, all in various stages of testing at Edwards. Northrop Grumman, the craft's manufacturer, announced in October that it was shifting production from San Diego to U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale.

Bolibrzuch said the plan is to begin pushing Global Hawks off the production line in 2003 and to have a full fleet of 40 aircraft by 2010. A decision on where to base the Global Hawk could be made by February 2001.

The $45 million Global Hawk would be the first high-altitude, long-endurance robot plane used by the military. There are currently unmanned reconnaissance planes that operate at lower altitudes.

Global Hawks are designed to fly at altitudes up to 65,000 feet for as long as 40 hours. The V-tail aircraft has a 116-foot wingspan and is more than 44 feet long - in other words, shorter than an F-16 fighter but with the wingspan of a Boeing 737 airliner. The plane has radar and optical and infrared sensors that could survey an area the size of Illinois for 24 hours and provide ground images to commanders via satellite.

Retired Adm. Eugene Carroll, a military analyst for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Defense Information, said Global Hawk is designed to avoid U.S. casualties in ``brushfire, marginal'' conflicts.

``If you lose a vehicle, that's just so much machinery that's gone and no political fallout,'' said Carroll. ``You don't want another Gary Powers in some crisis situation.''

On May 1, 1960, a U-2 reconnaissance plane was downed by a Soviet missile and U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured, triggering a crisis that forced cancellation of a summit conference.

Carroll said basing the fleet of robot planes near populated areas could be a safety issue. He said it would be a disaster if one of the planes went out of control and slammed into a school or hospital.

``There is that risk,'' said Carroll. ``It's a fact they've got to consider.''

Last March, a Global Hawk crashed north of Edwards after it went nose- down into a rolling vertical dive from 41,000 feet. The Air Force said the aircraft inadvertently received a flight-termination signal from a test range at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

A second Global Hawk was damaged in December when it veered off an Edwards runway while taxiing after a test flight.

``We believe this aircraft probably has an accident rate equal to a manned aircraft,'' said Bolibrzuch. ``That's really not any more of a concern than having a manned aircraft up there.''