WASHINGTON — Following steep losses of the General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper in recent combat operations against Iran, Air Force officials are accelerating efforts to replace the venerable drone with a new unmanned aircraft at a price of $10 million each.
“As we get to the end of the MQ-9 life, there was some early talk of where do we want to go afterwards, and candidly, as a result of some of the losses that we’ve experienced in combat operations, that discussion sort of got accelerated,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the Air Force’s chief modernization officer, said in a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon today.
“So we want to bring this thing forward because of the fact that, although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” he added.
At least 45 Reapers, a quarter of the Pentagon’s inventory, have been lost since the launch of Operation Epic Fury in February, the Washington Post reported in August. The Reaper’s depletion has also left the Pentagon with few good, short-term options to quickly backfill losses.
The considerable exhaustion of the drone, which Air Force officials say can cost up to $50 million a piece depending on its payload, prompted the Pentagon to kickstart a new program in July, dubbed the Mass Modular Aircraft (MMA).
