The longest flight ever completed by a full-scale unmanned conventional aircraft is 13,840 km (8,600 miles), by a USAF Northrop Grumman Global Hawk Southern Cross II, which took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California on 22 April and landed at RAAF Base Edinburgh, South Australia, 23 hr 23 min later on 23 April 2001.

The Global Hawk became the first UAV (unmanned air vehicle) to fly across the Pacific Ocean. The Global Hawk, which had its maiden flight in 1998 and is scheduled to enter low-volume production late in 2001, is a high-altitude, long-endurance  spy plane packed with highly sensitive surveillance equipment that enables it to gather information on large portions of the earth’s surface in a relatively short period of time. It is capable of staying aloft for more than 30 hours at altitudes of 20,000 m (65,000 ft).