General Atomics MQ-9 User manual
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PATHFINDER
THE MQ-9 YOU
DON’T KNOW
Thought you had it figured out? Better take another
look. The world’s workhorse UAS is adding a host of
upgrades designed to change the fight now and bring
the future faster.
A BREAKING DEFENSE
CUSTOM REPORT SPONSORED BY
SITREP
The Future of Unmanned ISR/Strike,
Available Today
Today’s complex age in global security is shaped by
rapid advances in technology with increased precision
and lethality. The power of battlespace information and
actionable knowledge has changed the character of
war, marking a revolution in how militaries ght. At the
forefront of this revolution is the ability to achieve what
the Oce of the Director of National Intelligence calls
“decision advantage.”
Battleeld success has always relied on good
intelligence, but today’s technology shift is ramping
up that need to levels unlike any seen before. Future
conicts will be decided in favor of the side that can
harness vast amounts of data, make quick sense of it,
and respond faster than the adversary. A critical piece
to achieving decision advantage is possessing sensing
capability that has capacity, exibility, and range. It is
the ability to rapidly process data, share information,
locate targets and — upon decision — act swiftly. Do it,
and do it now.
To see what the future looks like, one must only
examine the MQ-9A Reaper, the longtime workhorse
unmanned aerial system (UAS) used daily by the U.S.
military and its allies worldwide. While many view
the MQ-9A strictly through the lens of an ISR/strike
platform suitable for the counter-VEO (violent extremist
organization) ght in a permissive or uncontested
airspace environment, the reality is that this prized
platform also represents the vision of future UAS,
oering signicant but still not-yet-fully exploited
opportunity in today’s ght and tomorrow’s threat.
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, Jr., commander, U.S. Central
Command, addressed this in his testimony early in 2020
before the Senate Armed Services Committee: “For
me it comes down to a platform, and that platform is
the MQ-9. That is the platform of choice in the Central
Command Area of Responsibility. It is a platform that
can gather intelligence, it can strike, and it can do all
kinds of things. It is a jack of all trades, and I would
prefer to not divest that resource.”
That platform of choice is only getting better, with a
host of upgrades and congurations poised to push the
MQ-9A Reaper that so many know and trust into areas
and missions not yet seen, with the potential to save
billions of dollars in mission costs and manpower. When
it comes to UAS, the future is here and available now.
– Barry Rosenberg, Contributing Editor
Technology & Special Projects
2 BREAKING DEFENSE
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Demand for Unmanned
Modern warfare was revolutionized in the mid-1990s with
the introduction of UAS such as the MQ-1 Predator, which
let militaries hunt targets from afar with persistence and
precision never before seen. Built by General Atomics
Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), the Predator’s armed
follow-on, the MQ-9A Reaper, led the next revolution in
warfare as the world’s most important hunter-killer UAS
designed for long-endurance, high-altitude surveillance,
and lethal real-time response.
Shown is the heritage of General Atomics' platforms from the MQ-1
Predator to the MQ-9A Reaper to the MQ-9B SkyGuardian.
The U.S. Air Force (USAF) operates approximately
200 MQ-9A Reapers. The battleeld eects it
provides through persistent intelligence, surveillance,
reconnaissance (ISR) and close-air support abilities
across continent-size areas makes it a highly sought
after asset. It ies 11 percent of total Air Force ying
hours, at only 2.6 percent of the USAF’s total ying
hour cost. No other AF asset comes close to ying so
many hours at so little a cost. It has a demonstrated 90
percent mission-capable rate, which is the percentage
of time that a specic platform can complete its mission.
No other USAF asset can report this extraordinary
mission capable rate which is signicant given that it
ies sorties 3 to 4 times longer than any manned asset,
unrefueled, and the eet in total amasses ~300,000
hours annually – something no other USAF aircraft can,
or has done. In contrast, the Air Force’s 2019 missioncapable rates for fth-generation ghters (F-22 and
F-35) and bombers (B-1, B-2, B-52) were just above 70
percent, Breaking Defense reported in May 2020.
The demand for GA-ASI’s Predator-series of Remotely
Piloted Aircraft (RPA)—which includes the Predator, Reaper
(also known as the Predator B), MQ-1C Gray Eagle, Avenger
(Predator C), and MQ-9B SkyGuardian/SeaGuardian
(Predator B) lines—is demonstrated daily through the
accumulation of ight hours. As of October 2019, they
had cumulatively surpassed six million ight hours and
completed 430,495 total missions. Approximately 90
percent of those missions were own in combat.
In addition, these RPAs average more than 60,000 ight
hours per month supporting the USAF, U.S. Army, U.S.
Marine Corps, U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
NASA, the Italian Air Force, the UK Royal Air Force, the
French Air Force, the Spanish Air Force, the UAE Armed
Forces, and other customers.
Immediate-Future Technology:
Rapid Development with Low Risk
While UAVs have largely been used for intelligence
gathering and airstrikes over the past two decades
in the counterterrorism ght, new technologies are
opening up more possibilities for diverse missions built
on those own by the MQ-9A Reaper. New ideas for use
of unmanned aircraft — such as using advanced UAS
as low-cost attritable wingmen supporting manned or
unmanned platforms, building swarm-capable UAVs,
incorporating stealthier and smaller UAS designs, and
employing articial intelligence and automation — are
part of future-force discussions to meet the Great Power
challenges we’re seeing today from Russia and China.
To get there, the Air Force has appropriately embraced a
continuous capability development and delivery concept
aimed at rapid prototyping to get new capabilities out to
operating forces sooner. Through an “immediate-future”
orientation that uses the proven Reaper platform as a base
for further innovation and modernization, the Air Force can
address these future-force designs and continue to utilize
the MQ-9A into the 2040s without skipping a beat.
Leveraging the MQ-9 in the role of “rst mover” to
on-ramp future unmanned prototype capabilities
provides a readily available path to help accelerate the
development and integration of new technology that
will not only improve today’s capabilities, but also buy
down risk and development of future capabilities at
the same time. This would give the USAF and others
critical decision and budgetary space to develop
and aordably procure next-generation unmanned
platforms, while giving today’s warghter much needed
3 BREAKING DEFENSE
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