FTA: 'the firm reported in early June: “Between parts in stock for new builds, and company-owned Reapers with some number of flight hours on them, there are less than 10 total ‘new’ MQ-9As available to any customers anywhere in the world.” The destruction of eight of these new aircraft thus likely accounts for the United States’ entire reserve of its most critical unmanned aircraft type'
General Atomics no longer manufactures the MQ-9A, because they've moved on to the MQ-9B; but the US Air Force has been looking into replacing the whole program with a cheaper model that wouldn't hurt so much to lose. This just accelerates the transition already underway from higher-cost, complex UAVs to more expendable models.
It would be interesting to get a breakdown of what goes into something like the MQ-9, given they were introduced back in 2007 I wonder how difficult it would be to spin up a replacement using more COTS tech to lower the price and lead time for new builds.
I presume a lot goes into the satellite comms system, dealing with jamming, and certifying anything that flies.
In my complete ignorance I would presume a prop-driven unmanned aircraft built for loitering and dropping farily common ordnance with a quality optical package should be something that a bunch of defence companies could roll out quickly for the pentagon?
This topic comes up a lot when it comes to rockets and airplanes and it's surprisingly difficult.
For example, the F5 rocket is the most powerful rocket engine ever developed and that was 60+ years ago at this point. Up until Starship, the Saturn had remained the most powerful rocket ever built. This naturally leads to the question of "why didn't we just recreate it?" There are lots of reasons why. Material science has come a long way. We can't necessarily even recreate the materials used. Also, F5 engines were kind of bespoke and that expertise is long gone. We'd have to spend a lot of time and effort recreating it. It quickly reaches the point where the effort is comparable to developing an entirely new design, assembly line and the expertise to build, maintain, repair and use such a system.
So Reapers have their own production line, expertise, supply lines, etc. It's not something you can just make the assembly line go a little faster on, Henry Ford like.
But let's say you could make another subsonic loitering drone. That's basically developing an entirely new air system. It has to be integrated into the military. Drone operators, repairs, munitions, proving everything works, etc etc etc.
Now these 8 Reapers were destroyed on the ground, which is embarrassing and expensive. But ~30 have been destroyed in the air. The Reaper is realtively slow (~300mph top speed) and a so-called medium-height (meaning up to 50,000 feet) air frame and yet the IRGC keeps shooting them out of the sky. This is something the US has never had to deal with before. So if you developed another system with similar characteristics, woudln't it just be shot out of the sky too?
As for being prop-driven, too slow and too low.
As for ordinance, Reapers use a mix of Hellfire missiles for "precision strikes" (which really means "targeted assassinations") and gliding JDAMs, which are ~2000lb bombs but you to fly pretty much over the target and those Reapers keep getting shot down.
A big problem the US has faced is that they've been unable to achieve air supremacy and fly freely over Iran like they once did with Iraq. So they've had to continue using so-called 'stand off" muntiions. Hellfire missiles are an example of this. The problem is that these are more expensive and have smaller payloads because they've had to sacrifice explosives for a propulsion system.
It does. You have to click again after landing. Twenty years ago, I was a U.S. Navy officer, and spent some time in the Middle East, went through the Strait of Hormuz a dozen times or so, and we knew then that there was a very good reason not to go to war with Iran.
Fast forward to today, and we've elected reality TV personalities to lead our country and military and they're making decisions that are akin to what a newbie playing chess would blunder in their first opening moves of a game.
Because the conflict is not actually sanctioned by Congress, we are not at wartime replacement levels for munitions and aircraft, so these losses are not something that we can recover from quickly. The reapers that were destroyed are not even produced anymore. It's like amateur hour.
I'm no fan of the current administration, but this particular loss seems to be a failing of military strategy and leadership, not civilian ineptitude. It's not like the Whitehouse would have picked this staging area or directly controlled other logistics involved.
When the Commander-in-Chief guts the military leadership to ensure loyalists are at the top and instates a fool as the head of the department, is it any wonder what is causing military leadership and strategy failures?
The entire reason we are in this war is the current administration's ineptitude. Anyone who voted for this president should be ashamed they fell for a con.
Here's my hot take. Bush, Clinton, Obama, were all liars. Trump is actually the most honest president I experienced. Partly cause he is so bad at lying, but also cause he wants people to like him. People knew what they were voting for, he did not hide his idiocy.
We won't progress if we don't fix the mistakes that led to where we are. It's not just "Trump bad".
Dude straight up lied to everyone. Most blatantly corrupt incompetent fraud in US history. Just because he's narcissist enough to not care doesn't make it better. And yeah, lots of mistakes to fix that led to McConnell / Dumpty. Mainly erosions of separation of powers.
Whatever your opinions on the war itself, this has been a fascinating exercise in how a small regional power has militarily defeated the global hegemon relatively cheaply (ie with a military budgets 1% of the size).
Oh and "precision strikes" in this article is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this article. That means "targeted assassinations" and has done ever since the Obama administration [1][2].
Now these Reapers were lost on the ground, which points to Iran having access to significant intelligence, likely near real time satellite imagery and it's widely suspected this comes from Russia. But some ~30 of these Reapers have alsoo been lost in the air. That's significant too because the IRGC has developed relatively cheap "loitering" air defense munitions that are basically a jet engine atgtached to a missile. In some variants the missile has a parachute so it can be recovered and reused if it doesn't attack a target. And they seemingly can attack Reapers that are relatively slow (~300mph) but fly relatively high (~50,000 feet). The US military has simply never had to deal with this previously.
This seems to be enough of a threat that the US cannot freely operate aircraft in Iranian airspace for fear of being shot down. The US being unable to suppress air defense is also a new development.
There are lots of signals that various munitions are running critically low, particularly missiles such as Tomahawks and the various munitions for missile interceptros (eg THAAD, Patriot).
The military industrial complex exists to transfer government wealth to private hands. Producing weapons is secondary and this war has exposed just how bad it is at it. Why? Because using $1-4M interceptors to shoot down a $20k drone that can be produced in the thousands isn't sustainable. Production lines seemingly cannot be ramped up and the stockpiles already expended will take years to replenish.
This war is going to be written about as a turning point in history (IMHO). It may well mark the beginning of the end of American Empire that has been on steroids since 1945. But empires die slowly (and violently).
> Whatever your opinions on the war itself, this has been a fascinating exercise in how a small regional power has militarily defeated the global hegemon relatively cheaply (ie with a military budgets 1% of the size).
It's honestly perplexing how major powers seem incapable of learning from history. Short of nukes, bombing a country into submission has never worked. Even now the Ukraine War is here just staring everyone in the face and yet the same mistakes are being made all over again?
Iran has been preparing for this for decades, and has apparently been paying attention to everything going on in the region. What has everyone else been doing? Is it just arrogance?
FTA: 'the firm reported in early June: “Between parts in stock for new builds, and company-owned Reapers with some number of flight hours on them, there are less than 10 total ‘new’ MQ-9As available to any customers anywhere in the world.” The destruction of eight of these new aircraft thus likely accounts for the United States’ entire reserve of its most critical unmanned aircraft type'
General Atomics no longer manufactures the MQ-9A, because they've moved on to the MQ-9B; but the US Air Force has been looking into replacing the whole program with a cheaper model that wouldn't hurt so much to lose. This just accelerates the transition already underway from higher-cost, complex UAVs to more expendable models.
The military may want those cheaper models, but will the MIC give it to them?
Not if the funding is blocked.
Wiping out multi-million military equipment with basically a waste pipe that has attached wings...
Nope these were destroyed by ballistic missiles not drones.
It would be interesting to get a breakdown of what goes into something like the MQ-9, given they were introduced back in 2007 I wonder how difficult it would be to spin up a replacement using more COTS tech to lower the price and lead time for new builds.
I presume a lot goes into the satellite comms system, dealing with jamming, and certifying anything that flies.
In my complete ignorance I would presume a prop-driven unmanned aircraft built for loitering and dropping farily common ordnance with a quality optical package should be something that a bunch of defence companies could roll out quickly for the pentagon?
This topic comes up a lot when it comes to rockets and airplanes and it's surprisingly difficult.
For example, the F5 rocket is the most powerful rocket engine ever developed and that was 60+ years ago at this point. Up until Starship, the Saturn had remained the most powerful rocket ever built. This naturally leads to the question of "why didn't we just recreate it?" There are lots of reasons why. Material science has come a long way. We can't necessarily even recreate the materials used. Also, F5 engines were kind of bespoke and that expertise is long gone. We'd have to spend a lot of time and effort recreating it. It quickly reaches the point where the effort is comparable to developing an entirely new design, assembly line and the expertise to build, maintain, repair and use such a system.
So Reapers have their own production line, expertise, supply lines, etc. It's not something you can just make the assembly line go a little faster on, Henry Ford like.
But let's say you could make another subsonic loitering drone. That's basically developing an entirely new air system. It has to be integrated into the military. Drone operators, repairs, munitions, proving everything works, etc etc etc.
Now these 8 Reapers were destroyed on the ground, which is embarrassing and expensive. But ~30 have been destroyed in the air. The Reaper is realtively slow (~300mph top speed) and a so-called medium-height (meaning up to 50,000 feet) air frame and yet the IRGC keeps shooting them out of the sky. This is something the US has never had to deal with before. So if you developed another system with similar characteristics, woudln't it just be shot out of the sky too?
As for being prop-driven, too slow and too low.
As for ordinance, Reapers use a mix of Hellfire missiles for "precision strikes" (which really means "targeted assassinations") and gliding JDAMs, which are ~2000lb bombs but you to fly pretty much over the target and those Reapers keep getting shot down.
A big problem the US has faced is that they've been unable to achieve air supremacy and fly freely over Iran like they once did with Iraq. So they've had to continue using so-called 'stand off" muntiions. Hellfire missiles are an example of this. The problem is that these are more expensive and have smaller payloads because they've had to sacrifice explosives for a propulsion system.
Every Reaper destroyed is a Reaper reordered. Outcomes like these ensure the military's future as a jobs program.
Please update link to story: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/iranian-strike-eig...
That website doesn't seem to have that story on it.
It does. You have to click again after landing. Twenty years ago, I was a U.S. Navy officer, and spent some time in the Middle East, went through the Strait of Hormuz a dozen times or so, and we knew then that there was a very good reason not to go to war with Iran.
Fast forward to today, and we've elected reality TV personalities to lead our country and military and they're making decisions that are akin to what a newbie playing chess would blunder in their first opening moves of a game.
Because the conflict is not actually sanctioned by Congress, we are not at wartime replacement levels for munitions and aircraft, so these losses are not something that we can recover from quickly. The reapers that were destroyed are not even produced anymore. It's like amateur hour.
I'm no fan of the current administration, but this particular loss seems to be a failing of military strategy and leadership, not civilian ineptitude. It's not like the Whitehouse would have picked this staging area or directly controlled other logistics involved.
When the Commander-in-Chief guts the military leadership to ensure loyalists are at the top and instates a fool as the head of the department, is it any wonder what is causing military leadership and strategy failures?
The entire reason we are in this war is the current administration's ineptitude. Anyone who voted for this president should be ashamed they fell for a con.
Here's my hot take. Bush, Clinton, Obama, were all liars. Trump is actually the most honest president I experienced. Partly cause he is so bad at lying, but also cause he wants people to like him. People knew what they were voting for, he did not hide his idiocy.
We won't progress if we don't fix the mistakes that led to where we are. It's not just "Trump bad".
Dude straight up lied to everyone. Most blatantly corrupt incompetent fraud in US history. Just because he's narcissist enough to not care doesn't make it better. And yeah, lots of mistakes to fix that led to McConnell / Dumpty. Mainly erosions of separation of powers.
Direct link: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/iranian-strike-eig...
Whatever your opinions on the war itself, this has been a fascinating exercise in how a small regional power has militarily defeated the global hegemon relatively cheaply (ie with a military budgets 1% of the size).
Oh and "precision strikes" in this article is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this article. That means "targeted assassinations" and has done ever since the Obama administration [1][2].
Now these Reapers were lost on the ground, which points to Iran having access to significant intelligence, likely near real time satellite imagery and it's widely suspected this comes from Russia. But some ~30 of these Reapers have alsoo been lost in the air. That's significant too because the IRGC has developed relatively cheap "loitering" air defense munitions that are basically a jet engine atgtached to a missile. In some variants the missile has a parachute so it can be recovered and reused if it doesn't attack a target. And they seemingly can attack Reapers that are relatively slow (~300mph) but fly relatively high (~50,000 feet). The US military has simply never had to deal with this previously.
This seems to be enough of a threat that the US cannot freely operate aircraft in Iranian airspace for fear of being shot down. The US being unable to suppress air defense is also a new development.
There are lots of signals that various munitions are running critically low, particularly missiles such as Tomahawks and the various munitions for missile interceptros (eg THAAD, Patriot).
The military industrial complex exists to transfer government wealth to private hands. Producing weapons is secondary and this war has exposed just how bad it is at it. Why? Because using $1-4M interceptors to shoot down a $20k drone that can be produced in the thousands isn't sustainable. Production lines seemingly cannot be ramped up and the stockpiles already expended will take years to replenish.
This war is going to be written about as a turning point in history (IMHO). It may well mark the beginning of the end of American Empire that has been on steroids since 1945. But empires die slowly (and violently).
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-i...
[2]: https://www.cfr.org/articles/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
> Whatever your opinions on the war itself, this has been a fascinating exercise in how a small regional power has militarily defeated the global hegemon relatively cheaply (ie with a military budgets 1% of the size).
It's honestly perplexing how major powers seem incapable of learning from history. Short of nukes, bombing a country into submission has never worked. Even now the Ukraine War is here just staring everyone in the face and yet the same mistakes are being made all over again?
Iran has been preparing for this for decades, and has apparently been paying attention to everything going on in the region. What has everyone else been doing? Is it just arrogance?