Reaper offers grim reality to enemy below

AP/Washington Times:

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 has 1½ tons of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as the plane 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 — aviation history's first robot attack squadron — will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

That moment, one that will likely be low-key for the Air Force, 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," Gen. 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 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 and for supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.

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The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

At 5 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 Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.

"It's not a recon squadron," Col. Joe Guastella, operations chief for the Central Command's air component, said of the Reapers. "It's an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability."

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U.S. 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," Maj. 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.

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I have said before that UAVs are this war's equivalent of World War I's biplanes. The advancement in this area of warfare will be significant in the coming years and the Reaper is a leap from the Predator, but as you can see from the photo, it still has a similar look. All aircraft have trade offs and the Reapers use of turboprops probably gives it range and time on station advantages over speedier jets. They have bumped the speed up with the new engine,

The comparison to the A-10 is interesting and it probably explains why the A-10 has been scheduled to be deactivated. The A-10 has been our most effective attack air craft over the last 20 years. It is far more lethal and is much tougher than the Apache helicopter which has a similar mission. Where the Reaper has an advantage is its ability to stay on station for hours longer than a manned aircraft. I expect to see many more of these aircraft being developed.

The Strategy Page looks at the Air Forces hate-love relationship with UAVs and who will control their development. Duty in the Desert says the Reaper is a real killing machine.