WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense has launched five new weapon acquisition programs since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, including a $5.5 billion program to speed up purchases of Global Hawk unmanned spy planes.

According to a quarterly Pentagon summary of new and current acquisition programs called the "selected acquisition report," the DOD launched plans prior to the end of the Sept. 30 reporting period to buy an unspecified number of the spy planes. The Pentagon announced in November that Global Hawk had been deployed to southern Asia to help provide new reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities over Afghanistan.

Global Hawk is a high-altitude unmanned reconnaissance aircraft capable of flying 13,500 nautical miles and initially carrying a 2,000-pound payload. It is designed to loiter over targets for extended periods, providing field commanders with high-resolution, near-real-time imagery of large areas.

The spy plane was initially designed to carry synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical/infrared sensor payloads. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a research contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. to develop a foliage-penetrating radar that could be applied to the aircraft. Global Hawk is being built by Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Ryan Aeronautical Center (San Diego).

Other new acquisition programs listed in the Pentagon report include a radar upgrade for Navy F/A-18 E/F fighter planes. Called the "active electronically scanned array," the DOD estimated the initial cost of the upgrade program to be nearly $2.4 billion.

A communications program launched during the period is intended to meet the military's growing need for bandwidth as it attempts to transmit sensor and targeting data in near real-time. Hence, the military has launched a wideband communications satellite system called "Wideband Gapfiller" at an initial cost of $894 million.