On March 9th, 2018, the US Air Force officially
retires Predator, a platform that initiated a new era of unmanned air combat.
Predator were best known for their ability to deliver precision strikes as their controllers
sat halfway around the world in small and discreet bunkers.
The decision to pull the MQ1 Predator fleet is a preplanned , but its legacy will carry
on in the form of its bigger brother, the MQ-9 Reaper, an aircraft that will become
the mainstay of US Air Force drone operations.
In this video, Defense Updates lists TOP 5 IMPROVEMENTS IN MQ 9 REAPER WHEN COMPARED
TO MQ 1 PREDATOR DRONES Lets get started.
Predator has endurance of 24 hours, service ceiling of 25,000 ft. range of 675 mi or 1,100
km and max speed of 135 mph or 217 km/h. Reaper has endurance of, 27 hours, service
ceiling of 50,000 ft. range of 1,151 mi or 1,852 km and max speed of 300 mph or 482 km/h
The US Air Force has plans to aquire extended-range (ER) upgrade kits for almost all of Reapers.
With the ER kit, Reapers will have an endurance of up to 42 hours without external stores.
Reaper because of its much better performance will be able to carry out missions which were
not possible with Predator and for which US Air Force had to rely on traditional aircrafts.
The Predator has a wingspan of 55 feet, is 27 feet long, 6.9 feet high and has empty
weight of 1,130 lb (512 kg) while the Reaper has a wingspan of 66 feet, is 36 feet long,
12.5 feet high and empty weight of 4,901 lb (2,223 kg)
While the Reaper is much bigger than the Predator, the two killing machines cost about the same
to fly – figures released in 2013 put the cost per hour of Predator flights at $3,679,
compared to $4,762 for the Reaper.
That contrasts with $68,362 per hour for a F-22 fighter or $169,313 per hour for a B-2 stealth bomber.
Reaper’s main sensor is the nose mounted MTS-B multi-spectral surveillance and targeting
turret and its fuselage mounted Lynx synthetic aperture radar.
But Reaper’s pylons are very versatile and can be used to carry a variety of tactical
equipment like communications relay hops, electronic warfare pods as well as Wide Area
Aerial Surveillance (WAAS) camera arrays.
The additional sensors will act in conjunction with the drone’s main sensors.
The USAF is also planning to put more potent radars onboard some Reapers.
The idea is to create Ground Moving Targeting Identification (GMTI) sensor nodes that can
be dispersed around the war zone.
GMTI is a radar capability that can be used to trail moving targets on the ground over
time using radar.
This will go a long way in replacing E-8C JSTARS planes in a decentralized manner and
to increase capability for the critical GMTI mission set.
The Predator can only carry 2 Hellfire missiles.
The Reaper's hard-points give it the ability to deploy a combination of AGM-114 Hellfire,
GBU-12 Paveway, and GBU-38 JDAM munitions.
Generally a Reaper's external payload totals no more than about 2,500lbs on a strike mission,
but that enables the Reaper to carry 4 Hellfire missiles and a pair of harder-hitting 500lb
Paveways or JDAMs.
AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missile is capable of precision strikes.
The versatile missile has been in operation from 1984.
It can be used with many types of warheads like High-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) or tandem
anti-armor Metal augmented charge (MAC) or shaped charge Blast fragmentation.
GBU-12 Paveway is an aerial laser-guided bomb, based on the Mk 82 500-pound general-purpose
bomb, but with the addition of a nose-mounted laser seeker and fins for guidance.
The US Department of Defense has upgraded GBU-12 production versions to include GPS
guidance modes making the bomb more accurate.
The GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) 500lb bomb is manufactured by Boeing using
the Mk82 bomb body.
JDAM is a guidance kit that converts unguided bombs, or "dumb bombs", into all-weather "smart"
munitions.
JDAM-equipped bombs are guided by an integrated inertial guidance system coupled to a Global
Positioning System (GPS) receiver, giving them a published range of up to 15 nautical
miles or 28 km.
In the future, guided micro-munitions will give Reapers a more flexible weapons stack.
Predator was never designed with ability to defend itself against enemy jets.
They were mainly deployed in zones where threats were relatively low and US Air Force was in
control.
Reapers wont have this kind of advantage, as future operations may not be so easy.
It has been seen that in Syria, Russian fighters often shadow Reapers.
It should be noted that drones pilots have limited situational awareness; if a drone
is brought down, it is very hard to confirm how and by whom it was attacked.
Reapers like Predator currently doesn’t have any air-to-air missiles.
But this is going to change.
Reaper as a platform can accommodate air-to-air missile.
The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) Medium Altitude UAS Division revealed
on 7 March that has planned to award the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) a contract for
the development of Reaper Air-to-Air Missile (RAAM) Aviation Simulation.
This will be the first step in the process of deploying an Air-to-Air missile in Reaper
and would represent a significant move towards giving it self defense capability.