The General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9, proposed as a way to facilitate communications in the late 1990s, really caught on as a way for the U.S. to track insurgents during its so-called war on terrorism.

Since then, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles has revolutionized warfare, but will its future hold? Aviation Week editors discuss potential changes for the platform in the U.S. and abroad.

Don't miss a single episode. Subscribe to Aviation Week's Check 6 podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and Google Play. Please leave us a review.

Rush transcript:

Jen DiMascio:

Hi, and welcome to the Check 6 Podcast. I'm Jen DiMascio, and I'm here with Defense Editor Steve Trimble, and London Bureau Chief Tony Osborne. We're here to discuss a milestone that occurred just a few days ago, the 20th anniversary of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9 Reaper. Steve, you've been following this story for probably its entire history, or nearly so why don't you bring us up to speed on the program?

Steve Trimble:

Sure. Well, so I thought this was a really interesting time to look at the MQ-9 and where it's going, because my perceptions of it have really evolved in the last few years. If you go back just a few years to 2017, 2018, General Atomics was trying to win the MQ-25 competition, and they ultimately lost that competition after Boeing came in with a very low bid. This is for the US Navy's carrier base refueling system for an unmanned aircraft. And at the time it looked like the MQ-9 was going to really struggle to stay relevant. As the national defense strategy came out and created this pivot from counter-terrorism operations to grade power conflict, what was going to be the role for an aircraft that was really, it sort of defined the counter-terrorism, and even was criticized quite a bit at one point for being the poster child of the CIA assassination and drone strike program. Maybe assassinations a strong term for that, but just that entire thing that still goes on, actually.

And even this year, or in the past 12 months, there's been this debate about really where the MQ-9 fits in production going forward for the US Air Force, and internationally. On the US Air Force side, they've submitted a budget request last February that said that they wanted to eliminate MQ-9 production early. The next 20 or 30 aircraft that they were planning to buy, they wanted to shut down at the end of the last fiscal year. But Congress disagreed with that. And reinserted the funding for 16 more. And it looks like that could happen again this year, at least the debate.

On the other side is the international part of the program. And so we saw a lot of activity in the last year of the Trump administration especially, on authorizing export deals for the MQ-9 to new customers. We saw authorizations for the UAE, for Morocco, for India, for Taiwan. And the question is now, with the Biden administration in charge, how many of those deals will actually get signed? And that's going to be a very interesting discussion that we'll see within the Biden administration, and with Congress over the next year. And really what our cover story for the MQ-9 is, is it's sort of quietly carving out a role for itself beyond the counter-terrorism mission that has defined its legacy, and even in a great power conflict, that it has certain capabilities that may be very relevant in that new kind of operating picture.

And the key thing what General Atomics is saying is, you don't need penetrating stealth for every mission. There's going to be a lot of work for an aircraft that can stay in the sky for a long time, that doesn't cost too much to buy or to operate, and is very flexible in what you can put into it. Now there are a lot of concerns, questions about exactly how they could apply that, but a lot of the demos we've been seeing over the last several months show you a role, things like a self-protection pod, laser communications, even the ability to control an MQ-9 beyond line of sight without using a satellite, by taking a new technique with VHF comms, where you could actually pilot an MQ-9 from the ground, beyond line of sight, without a satellite link. So very interesting things going on.

Jen DiMascio:

So where do you think the Air Force is headed in terms of its advanced battle management systems plan to replace the JSTARS mission? How might the MQ-9 fit into that role?

Steve Trimble:

See, that's the really interesting thing that's developed, is the evolution of the advanced battle management system concept and how the MQ-9 fits into it. The key thing to remember is Joint STARS was going to be replaced by a business jet class aircraft that would basically be exactly what JSTARS is today, but instead of on a Boeing 707, on a business jet class aircraft. Which actually could include a Boeing 737. But the Air Force decided not to go forward with that approach because they thought that that kind of aircraft is just too vulnerable to perform the mission as it's defined today in that great power conflict where you'd have China and Russia armed with very long range anti-radiation missiles, and of course JSTARS has a big radar on it, which makes it a big target.

So the idea is that you take that JSTARS mission, there's actually two missions, there's the synthetic aperture radar on ground moving target indication to keep track of moving targets on the ground, also helicopters and low flying cruise missiles. And then there's the battle management function, which is basically an office suite in the back of the aircraft where you've got multiple people, I think up to 19 people on the JSTARS, managing, okay, here's a target, now I've got to figure out what weapon can address it. Do I need an airplane? Do I need an attack EMS missile from the army? And they're figuring all that out in real time onboard the aircraft. So ABMS distributes that entire package of sensors and battle management functions, and it automates it. At least that's part of the plan today.

And so what they need is a bunch of processors in the sky, and data links, and create this mesh airborne network with various platforms, possibly including the U-2, possibly including tankers that will also be up there in the sky as well. And aircraft like the MQ-9, which have the ability to stay in the air for 24 hours, 30 hours at a time, maybe even longer, and just flying circles, creating this network, creating a cloud-based data library. And as new sensor feeds and information comes in, these boxes on the aircraft are going to be able to identify the right targets and automatically pair those targets with the right weapons. So there's no human involved in the chain.

And that communication that has to take place when, say, JSTARS radar operator sees a target, and then he communicates that to the battle manager. The battle manager looks at all the different options for hitting that target, and then has to communicate with the human operator who has that weapon. If you think about it, that entire kill chain can take several minutes, even longer to do it. And the way the advanced battle management system works is this would all be done automatically and within seconds. And the Reaper could be a big part of that, but all that's still being worked out, but right now the Reaper is being positioned to take on at least part of that mission.

Jen DiMascio:

That's fascinating. Tony, I wanted to come back to you with something that Steve had touched on, which is the massive export push of General Atomics on its predator platforms. How has that manifested in Europe?

Tony Osborne:

It's a very good point that's made by Steve. I mean, Afghanistan conflict where the Reaper really came to its fore really prompted a lot of European countries to start looking at the medium altitude, long endurance platforms. And given that there were no real options available in Europe, a lot of countries went down the route of buying the Reaper. So the UK was pretty much full-steam with a [Foreign Military Sale], and it was also the first non-US country, obviously, then to go down the route of arming. They was followed by Italy, and subsequently we've seen The Netherlands, France, and Spain buying the Reaper. And then of course we're now seeing more and more countries access the platform. So it's proved immensely popular, and now we're seeing the next generation of Reaper come along, that's the MQ-9B, the Sky Guardian, and that's being adopted by Belgium, the UK in the form of the protector platform, which is a enlarged much more capable aircraft that's certified so it'd be on the fly in non-segregated air space. And then we've also seeing the aircraft selected by Australia too.

Certainly in Europe this has created some concern for European industry, because they have never been able to get a foot in the door. They've always seen this market share taken either by the Reaper or by the Israeli Heron, and so that's frustrated them, that's prompted them to go and develop the Eurodrone, which has these big twin engine, 11 ton platform, which they are hoping will take back some of that market and at least get a European platform into the hands of European armed forces. But we've also seen some heavy lobbying from General Atomics as well to try and keep the Reaper going in Europe. So yeah, that export thing, that success, the export success has create a few enemies for the Reaper, I think it's fair to say.

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, and not just the Chinese and Russians.

Tony Osborne:

Oh yes, we forget that the inability to be able to export across the world has then prompted a lot of Middle Eastern countries to go and buy Chinese so-called knockoffs, I think is what the state department officials called them last year, and has then prompted the US to try and create changes in the [Missile Technology Control Regime] (MTCR) regulations. Which could then lead to more [crosstalk 00:11:40].

Jen DiMascio:

Go ahead, Steve.

Steve Trimble:

The MTCR is a good point. So General Atomics is ramping up production of Guardians, Sea Guardian, and protectors, of course, for the UK now. And part of this is enabled by the fact that over the summer the Trump administration... So the Trump administration tried to change the terms of the missile technology control regime, which is actually a voluntary non-binding pact between 35 countries. It's not a treaty, it's not a law, but you're supposed to abide by it, and the point was to prevent the proliferation of cruise missiles back in the 1980s, when that was a concern. But it also got applied to unmanned air vehicles, because if they go on a one-way mission, they look a lot like a cruise missile, in fact.

But the MTCR category one definition has a presumed denial for any UAS that is in the Reaper size class, and it's defined by, I think it's 600 kilograms for the payload and 300 kilometers for the range. Could be wrong about that, but it's in that category. Ostensibly that meant that General Atomics couldn't export the MQ-9 to anybody, but the US government decided to make an exception for the NATO plus six countries, which is the NATO plus six countries that get treated for arms export control purposes, like NATO partners. And that includes Australia, South Korea, Japan, Israel, Jordan, actually. And there's another country I'm forgetting, but yeah, Canada, of course. So that's the... no, Canada's part of NATO. We'll figure it out.

But anyway, so the MQ-9 did get exported through that mechanism, but the question is, how do you get it beyond those? The Trump administration unilaterally decided to change the definition of category one. So even though the other MTCR members haven't changed the definition, the US now interprets the category one and MTCR as a speed definition. Anything faster than 800 kilometers per hour now is considered, to the US government, a category one UAS under the MTCR. That is, of course, the Trump administration decision, and the Biden administration will have to either uphold that, or decide to go back to the original definition as it states in the MTCR. And it's not clear where they're going to go with that. The UAE certainly thinks that it's going to get not only the MQ-9's, but also the F35's that were part of that.

Jen DiMascio:

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I'm also interested in knowing a little bit more about how Europe has responded in terms of its industrial base, or in terms of its plans to develop drones, Tony.

Tony Osborne:

Sure. So I briefly alluded to it earlier, but certainly European industry was getting, it's fair to say, pretty miffed back in around 2015 when all it saw was NATO countries adopting, NATO's European countries that is, adopting the MQ-9 and the Heron. It basically saw country after country, and literally you saw like three nations adopted within 18 months, countries like the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Germany was on the cusp of making a decision. Would it be a new Heron, or would it be Reaper? And of course ultimately went for Heron, Heron TP, in fact, as a sort of intermediate step. So you saw Dassault Airbus in Germany and Spain, and Leonardo in Italy, they all clubbed together and approach European governments, said, "Look, we are deeply concerned that Europe is basically losing its market share," which it didn't really have.

These companies have spent billions. In fact, if you total across the board on developing UAV technology, but it never found a real mission, or never found a true role. We saw BAE Systems in the UK developing things like Mantis, but they never actually found a customer. So they clubbed together, went to the European government, said, "Look, we can develop you or UAV, please don't keep buying Herons and Reapers." And that process has taken five years to the point where we are literally on the cusp, should be in the next few weeks, that Eurodrone contract gets signed.

The problem is that Eurodrone is sort of seen as a bit of a, I hate to say the word, white elephant. Certainly the French law makers have criticized it because it has two engines, whereas France is using the Reaper with its one. Eurodrone is very big, it's 11 tons, twin engine, and there are some big questions about whether that can really at least act as a competitor to the Reaper in the export market. It does seem like the countries, those four countries, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, will buy the Eurodrone, probably around, I think it's about 40 to 70 aircraft in total is on their various brand control systems.

But that's, I guess, a sort of steppingstone into getting a foot into that MALE market. Obviously Leonardo has done its own thing, it's got a new version of its of its Falco platform, which is sort of seen as a mini MALE aircraft. So Europe is taking tentative steps. Eurodrone has taken a long time to get going, there are questions about whether it can succeed in the market beyond its four initial customers.

Steve Trimble:

It's an enormous airplane.

Tony Osborne:

It is.

Steve Trimble:

It's twice the size of a Reaper, of an MQ-9 Block 5 Reaper.

Tony Osborne:

Part of that is due to Germany's want for an aircraft that can fly over its cities.

Steve Trimble:

So you need triple redundant avionics and blade controls.

Tony Osborne:

Exactly. And so I think French lawmakers said, "Why are we developing an aircraft with all these issues thrown into it?" And all these additional complications were prompted by Germany, who probably won't really fly it over their country anyway. So there is that. And of course General Atomics, coming back to the Reaper, have been lobbying very, very hard to try and get funds diverted into what they've called the Euro Guardian.

Tony Osborne:

So for a long time, if you want to go and buy a Reaper, you buy it through the FMS system, the foreign military sales system. They are trying to offer essentially a direct commercial sale of Reaper, and then be able to fit European avionics and sensors to it. And some of that is already happening in Spain, we've seen development of a pod that you'll be able to put European sensors into. But the Euro Guardian would actually have European sensors fitted directly onto it, rather than the existing General Atomics synthetic aperture radar or their electrical optical camera system. So far that hasn't had a great deal of traction because of that pressure to build European, but that could still move forward, and certainly the protector program in the UK will have several European developed senses developed by Leonardo on it, for example. And we've just seen that General Atomics are putting the Leonardo Osprey radar on it, for example, for the Sea Guardian mission.

Jen DiMascio:

Thanks Tony. Well unfortunately that's about all we have time for today, so I just wanted to thank all of our listeners and remind them to tune in again next week for another edition of Check 6, which is available for download on Stitcher, iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play. And if you have some good feedback, please share it with us. Thanks again.