Amid a recent avalanche of media headlines warning of significantly depleted US weapons stockpiles, The Washington Post is out with another fresh report Thursday which sounds the alarm, this time over advanced drones.
The US military lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the Iran war, American defense officials were quoted as saying. The same officials estimate that this constitutes roughly 25% of the Pentagon's fleet.
2024 image of American MQ-9 Reaper UAV brought down in Yemen’s Marib. ClashReport/XIf these were the type of small, cheap drones which have been prevalent in the Russia-Ukraine war, no one would see this as much of a problem, but Reapers are highly advanced surveillance systems and also hunter-killer aircraft, capable of flying for 27+ hours straight, and with some variants able to push past 40 hours.
Made by General Atomics, each drone costs between $30 million to $50 million. With 45 drones wiped out, this means that well over one billion dollars in hardware was either shot out of the sky or crashed in the context of Iran war operations.
The US has also at times lost parked aircraft at bases that came under Iranian attack in the Gulf. This was especially true of even pricier large aerial refueling tankers.
The Washington Post explains why the Reaper has been vulnerable to shootdown by Iranian forces over the past several months in the following:
The aircraft have seen heavy use a
