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USAF Splashes One Reaper

Posted by Robert Wall at 9/14/2009 9:57 AM CDT

Is it a blue-on-blue incident if it is deliberate?

Regardless, a U.S. Air Force fighter downed a MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft over Afghanistan on Sunday.

Operators lost control over the unmanned aircraft during its operation. With the UAV headed in a direction where it was about to depart Afghanistan's air space, a U.S. Air Force aircraft brought down the Reaper in what the Air Force says was a remote part of Afghanistan. The type of aircraft or method used to take out the Reaper was not specified.

The Air Force says merely that “the Reaper impacted the side of a mountain and there were no reports of civilian injuries or damage to civilian property at the site.”

The incident is now under investigation. Investigators also will be busy looking into the crash of an MQ-1 Predator at Creech AFB, Nev. That took place on Sept. 11. That General Atomics UAV was being used in a training mission.

Comments (9) | Permanent Link

Tags: ar99, afa09, Reaper, Predator, USAF, Afghanistan

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Marcase wrote:

It's expensive, but cheaper than having to explain to the Pakistanis what this Reaper was doing orbiting their side of the mountain.

9/14/2009 10:34 AM CDT

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Yodelling Cyclist wrote:

Since precise location in Afghanistan is unknown, we should also consider the possibility "cheaper than recovering bits of Reaper from Iran".

9/14/2009 10:42 AM CDT

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S-64 Skycrane wrote:

If a EA-18G can get a silhouette for making a F-22 kill in simulated air-combat then certainly there's a F-15/6 sitting on a ramp somewhere in Afghanistan with a freshly painted Reaper silhouette underneath the canopy.

9/14/2009 3:58 PM CDT

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John wrote:

I'm sure the Pakistanis would have loved to capture it. Not that it matters, since their intelligence service is likely getting loads of data on our Reapers parked in their country.

9/14/2009 6:05 PM CDT

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sferrin wrote:

Hey, if there can be an A-10 with a bicycle stenciled on the side why not an F-15 with a Reaper? (I still want to know if the USN Tomcat got a USAF Phaontom silouette on it back in th 80s or 90s. :-) )

9/14/2009 7:21 PM CDT

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Geogen wrote:

For such a major system as the Reaper in particular, even more so than the Predator, couldn't an auto pilot program be designed to autonomously take the aircraft back to point of departure in the case of control signal loss? Maybe including a slow speed final approach which could possibly intersect a special-contingency 'drone recovery' net system?

9/15/2009 12:04 AM CDT

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Robert Wall wrote:

Yeodelling Cyclist: since the crash site is northern Afghanistan, Iran is probably less likely of where it was headed.
Geogen, your point on why not including a return-to-base function is a good one. I'm not sure about the net recovery, but if you could get the Reaper back to a place where you have line of sight communications, then establishing a link should be simpler. Something to ask the USAF at the next opportunity.

9/15/2009 2:02 AM CDT

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RealityCheck wrote:

They do have such a failsafe. If positive communications are lost, they are supposed to navigate to what is commonly referred to as a Lost Comms Rally Point, which is a location where it is supposed to be good for re-establishing communication yet safe for the UAV to orbit until it runs out of fuel and crashes. The reason this one had to be shot down was because the Lost Comms Procedures were not initiated by the UAV. They may or may not be able to figure out why not. Depends on how much can be salvaged from the wreckage.

What's distressing is how many people believe that these UAV's go out and hunt for targets and engage them all on their own and that that was why it had to be shot down.

9/16/2009 12:13 AM CDT

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j3drvr wrote:

Hmmm, gives me a warm fuzzy having UAVs flying in the NAS. I guess they'll get shot down in country when they go astray, as well.

9/16/2009 6:12 AM CDT

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