MQ-9 Reaper

The MQ-9 Reaper is an American unmanned aerial vehicle built by General Atomics and introduced into United States military service in the mid-2000s as a larger, more powerful and more heavily armed successor to the earlier MQ-1 Predator drone. Operated remotely by a ground-based crew often located far from the aircraft's actual flight area, the Reaper is designed for long-endurance surveillance and reconnaissance missions and can also carry and launch precision-guided missiles and bombs against ground targets, combining an intelligence-gathering role with an armed strike capability in a single unmanned airframe. Its greater size, payload capacity, speed and operating altitude compared with the Predator let it carry more sensors and weapons and stay on station longer, and the United States and a number of allied nations have operated the Reaper extensively in surveillance, counterterrorism and precision strike missions since it entered service.