$30M US Reaper drone downed in Yemen — third loss in Houthi conflict: report

• Houthi rebels say they downed a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in Yemen, the third lost in May, AP reported.
• The Houthis have been targeting ships in the Red Sea corridor to pressure Israel and the West.
• Debates continue over the MQ-9’s cost, efficiency, and vulnerability in contested airspaces.

Another US MQ-9 Reaper drone came down in Yemen, images appear to show, marking the third loss during the conflict with Houthi rebels in the last month, an Associated Press report said.

Houthis have been targeting ships in the Red Sea corridor with missiles and drones as part of a campaign that aims to put pressure on Israel and the West over the war in Gaza. A US Navy carrier strike group and warships from European nations have defended the key shipping lanes.

Footage released by the rebels appeared to show the Reaper drone virtually intact in a desert with no identifiable marks, the Associated Press said.

The military affairs website, Army Recognition, said the Reaper’s GPS might have been hijacked.

Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree claimed his fighters shot dow the US Reaper drone in northern Yemen.

“The drone was downed with a locally made surface-to-air missile while carrying out hostile missions in the skies of Marib province,” he said in a statement. “This drone is the sixth of its kind to be downed during the Promised Victory and the Holy Jihad in support and backing of the Palestinian people,” he said.

AP said it was the third report of a downing of an expensive Reaper drone in the last month.

Business Insider could not independently verify the reports, and the US Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

A Defense Department spokesperson, speaking under the condition of anonymity to AP, denied that the US military had not lost a drone. The news agency also approached the CIA regarding the downing of the Reaper drone, but it declined to comment.

Debates over the Reaper drone’s cost and efficiency

The MQ-9 Reaper is an unmanned aerial vehicle developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) for use primarily by the United States Air Force. The UK has also been supplied with the drone.

According to the GA-ASI website, the Reaper drone “has an endurance of over 27 hours, speeds of 240 KTAS, can operate up to 50,000 feet, and has a 3,850-pound payload capacity.”

Each unit costs around $30 million. By comparison, the war in Ukraine has shown how military forces can use large quantities of low-tech, cheap drones rather than relying on a few highly expensive ones.

Many of the drone components and explosive warheads used in Ukraine can be purchased and compiled for as little as $500, according to Reuters.

Brandon Tseng, the president of drone and software firm Shield AI, criticized the Reaper drone before the recent string of downings by Houthis as “too expensive and too slow to regenerate to continue operating within range of surface-to-air missiles.”

“MQ-9 is a great aircraft, I’ve used it. But for the future fight, its role needs to be re-defined to quarterbacking intelligent teams of attritable aircraft,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

According to Dr Liam Collins, founding director of the Modern War Institute at West Point and defense advisor to Ukraine from 2016 to 2018, the MQ-9 was “designed in an era in which US air supremacy was assumed.

“The United States designed these platforms to maximize their ability to loiter while carrying a limited payload,” he wrote.

“They did not have to invest in building an aircraft capable of conducting evasive maneuvers because such maneuvers were not necessary.

“The MQ-9 Reaper may not be survivable in an environment characterized by large-scale combat operations.”

Collins’ comments came in response to a March 2023 incident in which a Russian fighter jet forced down a MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea after initially damaging its propeller.

In 2021, the Air Force sought to curtail procurement of the drone in the fiscal 2022 budget.