Talk:General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper

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Aviation: Aircraft

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Military history: Aviation / North America / United States

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Accidents

In 2012, the Reaper, Predator and Global Hawk were described as "... the most accident-prone aircraft in the Air Force fleet."[60] These figures must be taken with caution due to the aircraft's nature, often performing hostile or dangerous missions.

The second claim isn't backed up by the cited article which explicitly states most accidents are due to component failure or operator error. Ceaseless (talk) 15:56, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The unsourced and questionable second claim has been removed. Thanks, -Fnlayson (talk) 17:05, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Flight crew image

I made a minor correction to the flight crew image's caption as it contained the wrong date (someone in 2008 captioned it as being from 2005, when in fact is is from 2007). However, in addition to that the image is of an MQ-1 flight crew, not an MQ-9 flight crew, and so I'm uncertain if it should stay in the article at all. Perhaps it has value as a demonstration as to what a UAV station is like as a general thing, but since it was originally added to the article uncaptioned, and later captioned incorrectly, I do not know if that was the intent or if there really is value there. YF-23 (talk) 14:24, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Accident on 14 March 2023

In the chapter "Operational history" the incident from today is mentioned. The report of the Russian MoD reads: "On 14 March 2023 in the morning, the Russian airspace control systems have detected an American MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle flying over the Black Sea near the Crimean Peninsula in the direction of the state border of the Russian Federation.

◽️ The drone flew with its transponders off, violating the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime established for the special military operation, communicated to all users of international airspace, and published in accordance with international standards.

◽️ Fighter jets of the air defence force on duty scrambled to identify the intruder. As a result of quick manoeuvring around 9.30 a.m. (Moscow time), the MQ-9 drone went into an unguided flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface.

◽️ The Russian aircraft did not use on-board weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle, and returned safely to their home airfield." Source: MoDs official telegram channel in English. --Manorainjan 19:14, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The German language section lists 2 more accidents.

Maybe one should introduce subsection Accidents in the article. --Manorainjan 19:16, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Only notable accidents are covered on this Wikipedia; we don't try to list each and every crash since most are not notable or significant. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:10, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requirement to distinguish between MQ-9A/B Variants

MQ-9A and MQ-9B are, despite being superficially similar, notably very different aircraft (different certification standards meaning substantially different uses, in addition to substantial differences in performance and characteristic). International and national aviation Regulators are treating the two types very differently.

I recommend changing the title of the page to 'General Atomics MQ-9'. I have reviewed references to MQ-9 throughout the article and updated it based on existing references to be either MQ-9A (Reaper) or MQ-9B (SkyGuardian, SeaGuardian or Protector RG1). An alternative would be to create a seperate page for MQ-9B. Editor2222551 (talk) 11:25, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The MQ-9A Reaper variant is surely the dominant MQ-9 variant, but changing the article's name to "General Atomics MQ-9" is fine with me. Regards -Fnlayson (talk) 16:14, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]