The US military lost 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, or a quarter of its entire supply of the reconnaissance craft, during its war on Iran, the Washington Post has reported. The loss cost the US taxpayer an estimated $1.3 billion.
The loss figures were revealed by the Washington Post on Thursday, citing three unnamed US officials. A fourth US official told the newspaper that not all the lost drones were shot down. Some, they said, crashed after losing communications with their operators.
A successor to the MQ-1 Predator, the MQ-9 Reaper is a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) drone, capable of flying for up to 30 hours while carrying out surveillance missions or targeted strikes with Hellfire missiles. One of these craft costs between $30 and $50 million, and the US military had approximately 185 before the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28 – 165 in the Air Force, and 20 operated by the Marine Corps.
Within hours of the war beginning, reports of downed Reapers began circulating on Iranian Telegram channels. Video footage soon followed, with the Iranian military claiming to have shot down multiple MQ-9s mid-flight, and destroyed others as they sat in hangars at US bases across the Gulf region.
By the time the US and Iran reached a tentative ceasefire on April 9, preliminary reports in US media suggested that around two dozen Reapers had been shot down by Iranian forces. If the Washington Post’s figures are accurate, the initial accounts may have undercounted the losses by almost half.
The MQ-9 Reaper entered service with the US Air Force in 2007, and was extensively used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the US’ undeclared wars in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and beyond. Synonymous with President Barack Obama’s drone assassination program, the MQ-9 Reaper was viewed as untouchable until 2017, when Houthi forces in Yemen managed to shoot one down with a Soviet-era anti-air missile.
A string of losses followed, and by the time the US and Israel began striking Iran in February, the Reaper was already considered obsolete and ineffective against any military with anti-air capabilities.
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