#reaper drones

Click for better quality or whatever they say

Learning to do expressions better definitely helped me a lot here, and I would like to thank @kkolg for the tutorial because OH MY GOODNESS. THIS IMPROVED MY ART TREMENDOUSLY

By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, January 20, 2016

A record number of Air Force drones crashed in major accidents last year, documents show, straining the U.S. military’s fleet of robotic aircraft when it is in more demand than ever for counterterrorism missions in an expanding array of war zones.

Driving the increase was a mysterious surge in mishaps involving the Air Force’s newest and most advanced “hunter-killer” drone, the Reaper, which has become the Pentagon’s favored weapon for conducting surveillance and airstrikes against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

The Reaper has been bedeviled by a rash of sudden electrical failures that have caused the 2 1/2-ton drone to lose power and drop from the sky, according to accident-investigation documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Investigators have traced the problem to a faulty starter-generator, but have been unable to pinpoint why it goes haywire or devise a permanent fix.

All told, 20 large Air Force drones were destroyed or sustained at least $2 million in damage in accidents last year, the worst annual toll ever, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Pentagon has shrouded the extent of the problem and kept details of most of the crashes a secret.

The aircraft losses pose another challenge for the Air Force as it struggles to provide sufficient drone coverage for counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Cameroon, among other countries.

Despite a surge in requests from field commanders, the Air Force last year had to curtail its drone combat missions by 8 percent because of an acute shortage of pilots for the remote-controlled aircraft. Things have gotten so bad that the Air Force is offering retention bonuses of up to $125,000 to its drone pilots, who have long complained of overwork.

The Air Force also has contracted out more drone missions to private companies to meet what one general called “a virtually insatiable appetite” from military commanders for airborne surveillance.

While Air Force leaders have publicly bemoaned a lack of personnel and resources, they have said little about the high number of drone crashes, a long-standing vulnerability that worsened substantially last year.

Ten Reapers were badly damaged or destroyed in 2015, at least twice as many as in any previous year, according to Air Force safety data.

The Reaper’s mishap rate--the number of major crashes per 100,000 hours flown--more than doubled compared with 2014. The aircraft, when fully equipped, cost about $14 million each to replace.

The Air Force’s other primary drone model, the Predator, also suffered heavy casualties.

An older and less capable version of the Reaper, the Predator was involved in 10 major accidents last year. That’s the most since 2011, when the U.S. military was simultaneously surging troops into Afghanistan and withdrawing ground forces from Iraq.

Although the Defense Department has a policy to disclose all major aircraft mishaps, it did not publicly report half of the 20 Reaper and Predator accidents last year.

In five other cases, U.S. military officials provided confirmation only after local authorities reported the crashes or enemy fighters posted photos of the wreckage on social media.

According to the military, only one drone was downed by hostile forces: a Predator that was hit by Syrian air defenses near Latakia on March 17.

All but one of the 20 Air Force drone accidents last year occurred overseas. Six drones crashed in Afghanistan. Four crashed in the Horn of Africa, near a U.S. military base in Djibouti. Three crashed in Iraq. There were also crashes in Kuwait, Turkey, Syria and Libya.

In two cases, Air Force officials would not identify the country where the mishaps occurred.

Military drones have been dogged by persistent safety and reliability problems since the first Predator was deployed to the Balkans on a combat mission two decades ago.

Of the 269 Predators purchased by the Air Force since then, about half have been destroyed or badly damaged in accidents, records show.

Air Force officials describe the Predator as an experimental aircraft that was rushed into war zones, particularly after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. They say it has lasted much longer than expected and that, at a cost of $4 million apiece, is relatively expendable in the event of a crash.

The Air Force has about 140 Predators left and plans to retire them all by 2018. They are gradually being replaced by the Reaper.

Introduced in 2007, the Reaper can fly twice as far as the Predator and carry more bombs and missiles. Until recently, it also had a much better safety record.

Over the past three years, however, some production models of the Reaper have been hobbled by an outbreak of electrical failures.

Investigators and engineers have traced the problem to the starter-generator. It powers the drone but is prone to conking out, for reasons that remain unclear.

The Reaper carries an emergency battery backup system. But the batteries last only for about one hour. If a malfunctioning drone needs more time than that to reach an airfield, it is in trouble.

In such emergencies, the drone pilot usually has no choice but to intentionally crash the aircraft in a remote area, such as a mountainside or a waterway, to avoid striking people on the ground. No one has died in a military drone accident, though many catastrophes have been narrowly averted, documents show.

“Once the battery’s gone, the airplane goes stupid and you lose it,” said Col. Brandon Baker, chief of the Air Force’s remotely piloted aircraft capabilities division. “Quite frankly, we don’t have the root cause ironed out just yet.”

On Dec. 12, 2014, a Reaper armed with missiles and bombs experienced a starter-generator failure about 90 minutes after it took off from Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan.

As the batteries drained, the crew intentionally flew the drone into a mountain.

“I thought it was a very prudent place to ditch it, onto a high mountain top,” the unidentified mission crew commander told Air Force investigators, according to the accident-investigation report. “Our deal is we try to do it into high mountain tops.”

Less than two months later, on Feb. 4, 2015, an Air Force Reaper had to cut short a surveillance mission over Somalia when its starter-generator died.

#British reaper drones attack #ISIS

British forces have conducted their first drone attack on ISIS militants in Iraq. It was part of a series of coalition missions conducted near Bayji, north of Baghdad, where extremists were planting improvised explosive devices.

British defense officials say an unmanned aircraft known as a Royal Air Force Reaper ‘successfully attacked terrorists using a Hellfire missile. About five Reapers…

World

UK to deploy Reaper drones in Iraq as battle against IS intensifies

Britain is to use Reaper drones over Iraq as part of the battle against Islamic State militants (IS). The deployment, revealed by Defence Secretary Michael Fallon in a written ministerial statement, is to happen within weeks. It will be the first time British armed drones have been flown outside Afghanistan. The drones will be based somewhere in the Middle East outside of Iraq.

As Reaper numbers in Afghanistan reduce, we intend to move more of them to the Middle East, adding to our coverage.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon

The drone announcement came as a senior Syrian Kurdish official appealed to the international community to allow weapons into the border town of Kobane, which remains under threat from IS. IS is able to bring in reinforcements and weapons at any time, risking the town on the border with Turkey, said Kobane spokesman Idriss Nassan. Airstrikes by the US-led coalition were "effective" but not enough to defeat the jihadis, he stressed.

Kobane is not fighting for itself alone. Kobane is fighting for the world community. This is a battle against terrorism and therefore all world countries are asked to participate in this resistance.

By Eric Schmitt, NY Times, July 10, 2013

NIAMEY, Niger--Nearly every day, and sometimes twice daily, an unarmed American drone soars skyward from a secluded military airfield here, starting a surveillance mission of 10 hours or more to track fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda and other militants in neighboring Mali.

The two MQ-9 Reapers that are based here stream live video and data from other sensors to American analysts working with French commanders, who say the aerial intelligence has been critical to their success over the past four months in driving jihadists from a vast desert refuge in northern Mali.

The drone base, established in February and staffed by about 120 members of the Air Force, is the latest indication of the priority Africa has become for the United States at a time when it is winding down its presence in Afghanistan and President Obama has set a goal of moving from a global war on terrorism toward a more targeted effort. It is part of a new model for counterterrorism, a strategy designed to help local forces--and in this case a European ally--fight militants so American troops do not have to.

But the approach has limitations on a continent as large as Africa, where a shortage of resources is chronic and regional partners are weak. And the introduction of drones, even unarmed ones, runs the risk of creating the kind of backlash that has undermined American efforts in Pakistan and provoked anger in many parts of the world.

The increase in the number of potential threats in the region was made clear to Mr. Obama during his visit to Africa last week.

"We need in Africa--not just in Senegal but the whole of Africa--to have the military capacity to solve this problem, but we need training, we need materials, we need intelligence," President Macky Sall of Senegal told Reuters after meeting with Mr. Obama in Dakar to discuss fears of a growing violent Islamist threat in the Sahara.

The United States military, however, has only one permanent base in Africa, in Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, as well as a constellation of small airstrips, including in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop planes designed to look like civilian aircraft. The challenge for the United States, with little experience in Africa, is a difficult one.

"The U.S. is facing a security environment in Africa that is increasingly more complex and therefore more dangerous," said Michael R. Shurkin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who is now at the RAND Corporation. "Effective responses, moreover, require excellent knowledge about local populations and their politics, the sort of understanding that too often eludes the U.S. government and military."

And the threats facing Niger are typical of the ones that worry Mr. Sall. The government of President Mahamadou Issoufou is struggling to stem a flow of insurgents across Niger's lightly guarded borders with Mali, Nigeria and Libya. On May 23, terrorists using suicide car bombs attacked a Nigerien military compound in Agadez and a French-operated uranium company in Arlit, both in the country's north.

Two groups claimed credit for the bombings, which the authorities in Niger say killed at least 24 soldiers and one civilian, as well as 11 militants. One is led by the Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar and attacked a large gas field in Algeria in January, and the other is a regional offshoot of Al Qaeda called the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or Mujao.

The terrorist attacks in May, combined with an escape from Niamey's biggest jail last month by 32 detainees, including many suspected militants, have left Mr. Issoufou's government vulnerable to criticism that it cannot provide security, despite allowing American drones on Nigerien soil.

The government in Niger has defended that decision, and it is concerned enough about the threat it perceives from extremist fighters pushed out of Mali that it initially wanted the drones to be armed, a former senior American official said. But Obama administration officials thought that was unnecessary and politically unwise.

To experts on Africa, the possibility that the drones will yet cause a backlash remains real, especially if Islamic radicals make it an issue.

The United States acknowledged the drone deployment here in February--initially sending a single Predator aircraft and later faster, more capable Reapers--but since then it has released virtually no information about their missions, presumably to avoid raising their public profile. The Pentagon denied a request to interview the Air Force flight crews, logistics and maintenance specialists, and security personnel assigned here at a military airfield on the opposite side of the commercial airport in Niger's capital.

French, American and Nigerien officials all have a say in the daily missions of the drones, a Pentagon official said, but clearly the priority has been supporting the French campaign in Mali. The United States has flown more than 200 missions in support of the French, with the possibility that it could expand its operations to support a United Nations force largely composed of African troops that assumed control of the peacekeeping mission in Mali on July 1.

In some of the fiercest fighting between French-led forces and the Islamist fighters in early March, the drones hovered over a rugged mountainous region in Mali, giving allied forces targeting information for airstrikes. French and African officials say that perhaps 700 fighters, out of about 2,000 insurgents in all, were killed in the fighting.

As surviving fighters have melted back into the desert and mountains in recent weeks, the Reapers have been surveilling vast reaches of the north for signs of militant infiltration or secret new redoubts--a daunting task that one American official described as "looking through a soda straw" across the Sahara. At Niger's request, American officials said, the drones may also conduct surveillance along the border before entering Mali.

The American missions have not been without incident. On April 9, one of the drones crashed in a remote part of northern Mali, presumably because of a mechanical failure. "It was a total loss," one Air Force officer said of the wreckage.