The first unmanned attack squadron in aviation history will arrive in Iraq today looking to deliver 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles to the enemy - all from the comfort of a US Air Force base in Nevada.
The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper can be controlled via satellite link thousands of miles away from operational areas. The planes are launched locally, in this case Iraq and Afghanistan, but can be controlled by a pilot and sensor operator sitting at computer consoles in a ground station, or they can be "handed off" via satellite signals to pilots and sensor operators in Nevada's Creech Air Force Base or elsewhere.
The MQ-9 Reaper is the Air Force's first hunter-killer unmanned aircraft. It is the big brother to the highly successful and sometimes controversial Predator aircraft, which General Atomics said this week had flown over 300,000 flight hours, with over 80% of that time spent in combat.
The company said Predator series aircraft have flown an average of 8,200 hours per month over the past six months while maintaining the highest operational readiness rates in the U.S. military aircraft inventory. The MQ-9 Reaper is twice as fast as the Predator - it has a 900-horsepower turbo-prop engine, compared to the 119-horsepower Predator engine - and can carry far more ordnance - 14 Hellfire missiles as opposed to two.
At five 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 - 25,000ft compared to 50,000ft - as the Predator.
According to the Air Force, the MQ-9 Reaper will employ sensors to find, fix, track and target critical emerging time sensitive targets. The Air Force is developing the ability to operate multiple aircraft from a single ground station, in effect, multiplying the overall combat effectiveness over the battlefield.
General Atomics has built at least nine of the MQ-9s at a cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment. The Air Force's 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established May 1, is to eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan will be classified, the Associated Press says.
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Nothing an EMP generator
Nothing an EMP generator can't resolve.
All military spec equipment
All military spec equipment like this has long been protected against EMP attacks. All the flight and control electronic are shielded.
EMP is still valid
if the thing is receiving radio transmissions it will be susceptible to a remote attack by nature, which an emp could take advantage of by just sending something far too strong at it. Again it'd have to be rather targetted but given that it would be sending data back to a base station it wouldn't be too hard to fine and even then if there was something consistently strong rf wise it could disable the command system anyway. so while the thing might be shielded, the radios can't be
EMP still Valid.. not.
The reaper is semi autonomus. That is to say that if it's communications is lost, it will loiter for a time, and then return to a safe zone and land on it's own using the same systems that many commercial and military craft use to accomplish that task. The usual method of landing, though, is a hand off to a pilot at or very near the airfield.
EMP and microwave jamming was examined extensively in the production and approval of this aircraft.
On a side note... I was interested in the wording of a previous post. "Nothing EMP won't be able to deal with.." or some such phraising. Makes me wonder who's side your on? Got some weapons your hiding in your mosque?
Perhaps a better choice of words would have been.. "Could enemy EMP bring it down".
Here's another unmanned
Here's another unmanned aircraft rolled out this week, in case you missed it.
So here we go then - warfare
So here we go then - warfare as a video game is almost complete. Horrific as war is, this will make it worse as there's no morality holding you back.
You say that as though there
You say that as though there is morality holding us back now.
Us
As near as I can tell, warfare has been barbaric, and lacking morals for thousands of years. Codes of honor and conventions are a thin veneer on top of what warfare becomes.
It does not matter if you are a dictator and think it should be the strong should take from the weak. Or if you think your fight is just.
Something happens to you, when someone tries to kill you. Morality can seem very situational
I would rather lose liquid
I would rather lose liquid assets than human assets. In some cases targets are not attacked due to the high risk in terms of human losses.
How about a nice game of
How about a nice game of chess?