Robot Air Attack Squadron Bound for Iraq
July 15th, 2007Via: AP / MyWayNews:
The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It’s outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.
The Reaper is loaded, but there’s no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.
The arrival of these outsized U.S. “hunter-killer” drones, in aviation history’s first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.
…
The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.
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 as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.
While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons – or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.
“It’s not a recon squadron,” Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command’s air component, said of the Reapers. “It’s an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability.”
“Kinetic” – Pentagon argot for destructive power – is what the Air Force had in mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with death.
“The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system,” Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.
“The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system,â€
Oh, well said, Moseley. Which cleverly distinguishes it from other death-dealing systems
They need to test them before they use them to attack Iran.
I have a sneaking suspicion that our Air Force may already be conducting airborne operations against Iran.
I can’t wait to see those Russian TOR systems put to the test. That’ll be interesting to say the least.
No. Honestly I rather wouldn’t see any conflict because a heart palpitating nut and his junior sock puppet get a hard on every time someone dies.