According to Forbes, the Ukrainian delegation met in Washington with General Atomics, which manufactures the MQ-9 attack aircraft, and received assurances that they could be delivered soon. Such an agreement would need to be ratified by US authorities.
Azrael has a terrible reputation, Azrael – “grim reaper”, that is, with a hint of the expression death, he is also called a “terrorist hunter”. Missiles from the MQ-9 drone fired a number of al-Qaeda leaders (the organization was banned in Russia) and Iranian general Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in January 2020, an aviation expert, Colonel, told Gazeta.ru Retired Air Force Nikolai Pavlenko.
The MQ-9 Reapers themselves also had losses – 12 drones have been lost since 2011, only 4 devices on this list are guaranteed to be hit, while in another case two Reapers working in pairs collided in the Syrian sky in the air. The remaining losses are due to take-off and landing accidents caused by operator errors.
“Remote control of this drone, comparable in size to a Thunderbolt attack aircraft, seems to be a very difficult task. In the United States, it takes more than a year to train military personnel who already have such experience to control the MQ-9 Reaper,” he said. .
A small group of the Ukrainian military is undergoing accelerated training in the US on the use of Switchblade kamikaze drones scheduled to be delivered to Ukraine, the Associated Press reported. This is the basic course.
Pavlenko believes that in the case of the MQ-9 Reaper, it is impossible to train the crew by the express method, due to the complexity of its use and the high cost of the aircraft itself. At the same time, the expert noted that the functions of the operator can be performed by American specialists.
“The appearance of this “reaper” in the Ukrainian sky will be a “harvest” for Russian air defense systems,” military expert, reserve major general Vladimir Popov told socialbites.ca. – This drone has a number of disadvantages, including its large dimensions with a wingspan of twenty meters and low speed, there will be a large fat spot on the radar screen, the coordinates of which will immediately go to the missile launcher. Even a ceiling height of 15 kilometers will not save, especially since the efficiency of using this drone is about 6 kilometers. Of course, you can not get from the Igla type MANPADS, but the Buk-M2 or Tor-M2 type air defense systems will eliminate this “mower” with the very first launch.
The specialist noted that the current experience in using the MQ-9 Reaper is mostly reduced to reconnaissance functions and strike use in the absence of serious air defense systems.
“This is exactly why they went unpunished in Afghanistan. They flew to Libya – minus one, the fighters of a private military company turned out to have the necessary weapons, flew to Syria – the same result. On the territory of Ukraine, in Karabakh, where there was nothing to detect and destroy them, the lauded Turkish “Flagbearers”, considered the “kings of the skies”, were successfully shot down. The reaper, of course, will suffer the same fate if he does. In general, it seems to me that the experience of combat operations during a special military operation will significantly reconsider the use of attack aircraft. They’ve been over-praised,” says Major General Popov.
In the USA itself, the “Reaper” is also criticized in the expert community. Thus, Defense News reported in October 2021 that it was “too slow and unable to operate in combat with a well-equipped enemy,” citing its sources at the Pentagon, reporting that the U.S. Army was allegedly looking into it. For a replacement for this drone.
In December 2021, retired Navy Chief Kenneth Mackenzie described The Reaper on Fox News as “unsuitable against high-profile enemies.”
“Such discussions about the outgoing period of the Reaper did not stop Kiev in its desire to buy an expensive“ toy ”in the form of the MQ-9 Reaper, with which they expected to“ radically change ” the course of hostilities. in Ukraine. The logic is similar to the purchase of the Turkish “Bayraktar”, which was widely promoted in the Karabakh war, but failed to help Ukraine. The MQ-9 is superior to Bayraktar, capable of carrying 4 AGM 114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles or up to 38 GPS-guided bombs.
The drone, whose flight range reaches 1900 kilometers, can stay in the air for more than 24 hours and can reach a maximum speed of 400 km / h. But I repeat, all these advantages are of no importance in the presence of effective air defense systems. The “reaper” can work against terrorists, but not against the Russian army”
Major General Popov summed it up.
Source: Gazeta
