MQ-9 Reaper Shootdown

By now, you’ve probably read about the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper UAV over Yemen.  The event has been confirmed by U.S. military officials (1). 

Why is this of significance to a Navy website, you ask?  Well, I’ve repeatedly harped on the theme that our planned surveillance and targeting platforms such as UAVs, P-8s, and other large, slow, non-stealthy aircraft are not survivable and, as such, will be unavailable to perform their tasks in a peer war.  If some low end threat in Yemen can shoot down a top of the line UAV, what will China or Russia do to our UAVs and patrol aircraft?

MQ-9 Reaper

I’ve repeatedly told you to turn this situation around.  If Chinese or Russian large, slow, non-stealthy UAVs or patrol aircraft were attempting to surveil or target our forces, would we allow it?  Of course not!  And yet we think we’ll be able to conduct surveillance and targeting of them, unimpeded. 

We need to recognize this inherent flaw in our thinking and rectify it or we're going to be fighting the next war blind.

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(1)Defense News website, “US MQ-9 drone shot down in Yemen”, Shawn Snow, 2-Oct-2017,

https://www.defensenews.com/flashpoints/2017/10/02/us-mq-9-drone-shot-down-in-yemen/

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