BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq The airplane is the size of a jet fighter,
powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet.
It's outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a
half of guided bombs and missiles.
The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs
targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.
The arrival of these outsized U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's
first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has
seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.
That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected "soon," says the
regional U.S. air commander. How soon? "We're still working that," Lt. Gen. Gary
North said in an interview.
The Reaper's first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan, and senior Air
Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next
spring. They look forward to it.
"With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home," North said.
The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a
400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator
drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq, 50 miles north of
Baghdad. That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers.
It's another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq,
supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S.
ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.
The estimated two dozen or more unmanned MQ-1 Predators now doing surveillance
over Iraq, as the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, have become
mainstays of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne "eyes"
watching over road convoys, tracking nighttime insurgent movements via infrared
sensors, and occasionally unleashing one of their two Hellfire missiles on a
target.
From about 36,000 flying hours in 2005, the Predators are expected to log 66,000
hours this year over Iraq and Afghanistan.
The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a
major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.
At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator.
Its size — 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan — is comparable to the profile
of the Air Force's workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and
twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.
While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14
of the air-to-ground weapons — or four Hellfire's and two 500-pound bombs.
"It's not a recon squadron," Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central
Command's air component, said of the Reapers. "It's an attack squadron, with a
lot more kinetic ability."
"Kinetic" — Pentagon argot for destructive power — is what the Air Force had in
mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with
death.
"The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T.
Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last
September.
General Atomics of San Diego has built at least nine of the MQ-9s thus far, at a
cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment.
The Air Force's 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established on May 1, is to
eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq
and Afghanistan will be classified.
The Reaper is expected to be flown as the Predator is — by a two-member team of
pilot and sensor operator who work at computer control stations and video
screens that display what the UAV "sees." Teams at Balad, housed in a hangar
beside the runways, perform the takeoffs and landings, and similar teams at
Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, linked to the aircraft via satellite, take over
for the long hours of overflying the Iraqi landscape.
American ground troops, equipped with laptops that can download real-time video
from UAVs overhead, "want more and more of it," said Maj. Chris Snodgrass, the
Predator squadron commander here.
The Reaper's speed will help. "Our problem is speed," Snodgrass said of the
140-mph Predator. "If there are troops in contact, we may not get there fast
enough. The Reaper will be faster and fly farther."
The new robot plane is expected to be able to stay aloft for 14 hours fully
armed, watching an area and waiting for targets to emerge.
"It's going to bring us flexibility, range, speed and persistence," said
regional commander North, "such that I will be able to work lots of areas for a
long, long time."
The British also are impressed with the Reaper, and are buying three for
deployment in Afghanistan later this year. The Royal Air Force version will
stick to the "recon" mission, however — no weapons on board.
