In the world war against terrorism, America Reaper MQ-9 was the most terrifying weapon. Armed with missiles and capable of staying in the air for 24 hours, Reaper – and his older cousin, the predator MQ -1 – has become the symbols of the war of remote control of the drone age.
But the sky is no longer so suitable for Reaper.
Reaper built by General Atomics has a 66 -foot scale is almost double that of small crew planes like Cessna 172. Many of these large and expensive – Reaper costs $ 30 million – have been fell Above Yemen, Lebanon and Ukraine.
This means that some experts wonder if soldiers like that of the United Kingdom should stop buying long endurance drones at average altitude (males) such as The Reaper. Better to buy smaller and cheaper drones than they can afford to lose, their thought is.
“Male drones can provide persistent surveillance, including through clouds with a synthetic opening radar (SAR), but only if they can survive,” wrote military researcher Robert in a toll in a essay For the Royal United Services Institute, a British reflection group. “And as this survival is now very questionable, it seems that the United Kingdom must look for alternative approaches.”
At least 15 harvesters have been shot down by the Houthis rebels on Yemen since October 2023, with seven destroyed in March and April 2025, estimated losses or more than $ 500 million. The threat to the harvesters would probably be much greater against a more advanced soldier, who exploits larger and more precise aerial defenses. Houthi air defenses are Far from the point: The old SA-2 and SA-6 missiles made Soviets date back to the 1960s, or are Iranian weapons based on these conceptions.
In the Ukraine war, Ukraine is manufactured by the Turkish TB2 BAYRAKTAR DRONES – Armed with anti -tank missiles guided by laser – initially devastated the Russian armored columns which invaded in February 2022. But dozens of TB2 were destroyed once the Russian aerial defenses were deployed, and the Bayraktar disappeared from the Ukrainian sky. In the meantime, The Hermès drones of Israel were victims of Hezbollah’s anti -aircraft missiles.
This left Great Britain in a dilemma. The male drone of the British army, the goalkeeper, has proven a failure. Based on the Hermes 450 of Israel, the Watchkeeper produced by Thales Group and Elbit Systems stolen for the first time in 2010, but was only deployed in 2018. DelaysTechnical problems and several accidents stimulated the retirement of the fleet of guards in March, less than seven years after its implementation.
The British army claims that the goalkeeper drone at an average altitude is already obsolete. CPL Matthews / UK MOD
“We are getting rid of Watchkeeper because this system has been in service since 2010 and, according to all military leaders, is obsolete,” said Lord Vernon Croaker, a senior official of the Ministry of Defense, in the House of Commons in November 2024.
With a range of nearly 100 miles, the watchman could look deep in enemy areas and locate supply deposits, air bases and other targets for long -range artillery, missiles and planes. Thus, the British army is now launched Corvus projectWho calls for a long -standing surveillance drone that can stay in the air for 24 hours and steal deep penetration missions.
But this can only lead to another male drone too expensive to buy in quantity and too vulnerable to be consumable. These same problems threaten Reaper ($ 30 million) and Bayraktar TB-2 ($ 5 million). “The evaluations in Ukraine would suggest that the point where an UAV becomes awarded is a unit price less than $ 200,000 for ISR (surveillance missions),” wrote Tollast.
This creates a dilemma of-dispatches. Hords of first -person drone views (FPV) cheap and consumables have become the dominant weapon in the Ukraine war, paralyzing daring maneuvers on the battlefield and practically leading armored vehicles outside the battlefield. These are Commercial drones in mass products This can be rigged for military missions at a total cost of hundreds of dollars. Most of them have a limited payload capacity, an altitude and a range of around 10 miles.
At the other end of the spectrum is the size of a leading aircraft RQ-4 Global HawkA drone of $ 200 million high altitude which is withdrawn from the American army. A world hawk was destroyed by one Iranian anti-aircraft missile in 2019.
In the middle, drones like Reaper, which can transport a payload of 2 tonnes of missiles and sensors, have a range of 1,200 miles and can fly to 50,000 feet. The harvesters were essential planes in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because they could stay in the air to hunt targets much longer than a crew plane, and be placed in a more dangerous airspace because there was no risk for a human leaflet. For example, from September 2007 to July 2008, the MQ-9 stole 480 outings totaling more than 3,800 hours in Afghanistan.
In many ways, these drones resemble the first drones, which were just modified versions of inhabited planes. For example, the Second World War F6F Hellcat Fighters Converted into remote -controlled machines for target practice. THE AQM-34L FIREBEE This managed the recognition missions above Vietnam was 29 feet long, not much shorter than a MQ-9.
They face a blatant problem: more opponents are armed with air defense missiles capable of eliminating drones the size of an aircraft. Drones like the MQ-9 have not been designed to fly in areas covered by enemy air surface missiles. The cruising speed of a Bayraktar is only 80 miles per hour, while even a relatively rapid mower has a cruising speed of around 200 miles per hour. Thus, even a militant group like the Houthis can lower an MQ-9 with an old SA-6 Soviet missile on the air surface.
This puts drones on a fork on the road – let’s become low cost and large volume or even at higher cost with fewer planes but more capacities. America Replacement of Reaper Can make the latter: a more sophisticated – and expensive – drone which includes stealth capacities to escape the radar; Radar remains the main means for aerial defenses to detect targets. For Great Britain, with its defense budget much smaller by around $ 70 billion, an improved male drone is not viable. In tolls sees several unknown options, including satellites with low terrestrial orbit, high altitude balloons and attached aerostats (such as managers), which avoid the vulnerability of drones at medium altitude.
However, satellites and balloons may not be in position when you need it, and aerostats cannot be sent quickly to distant areas. Unless a technological breakthrough allows small drones to take advantage of the capacities of their biggest brothers, the inability of large drones to function reduces the enormous advantage of detecting the battlefield that the American and Western soldiers have appreciated.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy Magazine and other publications. He has a master’s degree in political science of Rutgers Univ. Follow him Twitter And Liendin.
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