DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The fate of the MQ-9 Reaper has once more entered public debate after senior U.S. defense officials confirmed Houthi militants had downed one among the drones over international waters off the coast of Yemen on Nov. 8.
Lately, experts have questioned the sustainability of flying such expensive aircraft in contested environments, where less expensive countermeasures are capable of goal them.
For instance, in 2021, now-retired acting Air Force Secretary John Roth sought to curtail procurement of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems-made drone within the fiscal 2022 budget.
Earlier this month, Brandon Tseng, the president of drone and software firm Shield AI, said the MQ-9 is “too expensive and too slow to regenerate to proceed operating inside range of surface to air missiles.”
“MQ-9 is an ideal aircraft, I’ve used it. But for the long run fight, it’s role must be re-defined to quarterbacking intelligent teams of attritable aircraft,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “And this doesn’t just apply to MQ-9; it includes MQ-4, MQ-1, P-8, SH-60, etc.”
And an article from earlier this yr on the U.S. Military Academy’s Modern War Institute website noted “the MQ-9 Reaper is probably not survivable in an environment characterised by large-scale combat operations.”
“There may be a choice to be made,” wrote Liam Collins, who served as a defense adviser to Ukraine from 2016 to 2018. “Should the US military field more survivable UAVs — ones able to conducting defensive maneuvers — or spend money on smaller ones that it doesn’t mind losing?”
The article was in response to a March 2023 incident that saw a Russian fighter jet force down a U.S. Reaper over the Black Sea, after initially damaging its propeller. The interception ultimately “resulted in a crash and complete loss” of the aircraft, Air Force Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Africa, said in an announcement.
And in July, amongst other recent reports Russia was harassing MQ-9 drones, a Russian jet fired flares at a Reaper involved in a counterterrorism mission over Syria, damaging its propeller.
Asked concerning the acquisition process for constructing — and replacing — these systems, an official with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems said that, “with a hot production line, we will construct one in three to eight months.”
“But combat loss and attrition are built into the [U.S. Air Force] order scheme. Some amount of loss is predicted,” C. Mark Brinkley, senior director of communications with the firm, told Defense News on the Dubai Airshow this week.
The war in Ukraine has shown that successful battlefield outcomes are possible through the use of large quantities of low-tech and low-cost weapons, relatively than counting on fewer, costlier drones.
But Brinkley pushed back at this assessment.
“There are corporations on the market that want you to imagine you’ll be able to replace the potential of a Reaper or [MQ-9B] SeaGuardian with a 100-pound stomp rocket that may carry 25 kilos for 10 hours. The one catch is that they would want a billion dollars to invent some magical artificial intelligence to make them relevant,” he said. “Even when that AI existed today and you could possibly swarm 50 of them together, your payload and endurance can be 25% of the MQ-9B. So don’t tell me that’s the long run.”
To extend the Reaper’s survivability, Brinkley really helpful the combination of air-to-air missiles and an early warning radar to “transform the situation” and reduce harassment opportunities.
This echoed an identical suggestion made by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem, who advised the Pentagon to fund the combination of a self-protection capability on the Reaper — something the department has yet to do.
Dave Alexander, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, offered two ways to answer the Reaper’s vulnerabilities in contested areas.
“You either complain about it,” he told Defense News on the show, “or do something about it.”
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide selection of topics related to military procurement and international security, and makes a speciality of reporting on the aviation sector. She is predicated in Milan, Italy.