The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and Air Force are collaborating on a project to replace the General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper which, depending on payload, can cost up to $50 million apiece.
“The Joint Force’s reliance on low density, high-value ‘exquisite’ –greater than $30 million–manned and unmanned aircraft is unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost anti-aircraft capabilities,” according to a DIU solicitation on a future “massed modular aircraft.”
“Crucially, MMA must retain the ability to be outfitted with a variety of payloads, including full motion video sensors, to execute missions that the MQ-9A performs today,” DIU said. “By deploying large groups of risk-tolerant MMA, the Joint Force can overwhelm enemy defenses even while experiencing numerous MMA losses. Keeping a constant airborne MMA presence to launch weapons, gather intelligence, perform electronic warfare missions, or relay communications will force an adversary to stay on the defensive. This relentless pressure will exhaust the adversary, forcing them to burn through expensive anti-aircraft missiles and resources faster than they can be replaced.”
DIU wants a fleet of 20 MMA to achieve initial operational capability by fiscal 2031. Responses to the solicitation are due by July 23.
“While the Air Force continues to maximize the value of its existing MQ-9 fleet through targeted repairs and procurement of available airframes to meet current Combatant Commander requirements, long-term planning is increasingly focused on concepts built around mass, maneuver, enduring persistence and distributed lethality,” the Air Force said on July 8. “Under this framework, future ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] capabilities would be designed from the outset to be produced in larger quantities, fielded more rapidly and employed with greater operational risk tolerance than traditional aircraft.”
“A key element of that vision is the requirement for open systems architecture and modular design,” the service said. “Rather than treating interoperability and upgradeability as enhancements added later in development, the Air Force is increasingly viewing these characteristics as foundational requirements from the start.”
In May, Air Force Maj. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s head of force modernization, said that he had approved a requirements document for the MQ-9A follow-on and that the Air Force is looking to adopt, at least in part, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft process for the replacement.
“We believe what is possible is to take advantage of modern manufacturing technologies so that we can buy something that is more flexible, lends itself more to open architecture, is more easily produced in mass numbers, and ultimately you could use in a more attritable way,” Niemi testified.
“The MQ-9 is serving us well in the conflict in the Middle East, but the MQ-9, depending on what sensors are on that, can cost up to $50 million a copy so by getting something that’s more modular, we think we can take advantage of an opportunity, if you knew that aircraft was gonna operate in a high threat environment, taking off those packages to drive that cost to a much lower price point,” he said.
The number of air to ground strikes in Iran by Reapers has far outstripped the number by any other aircraft, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said in May, yet the Air Force is down to a fleet of 135 MQ-9As, as the service has lost 24 Reapers in the conflict with Iran.
The MQ-9A line closed last year, but General Atomics still makes the MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian.
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill requires the build of at least 45 MQ-9s by the start of fiscal 2029 to meet a minimum requirement of 180.
A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.
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