After ‘concerning’ losses, Air Force pushes to replace Reaper faster

A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper aircraft assigned to the 147th Attack Wing, Texas Air National Guard, takes off during a search and rescue training mission as part of exercise Northern Viking 26 at Keflavík Air Base, Iceland, Aug. 28, 2026. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Edgar Grimaldo)

WASHINGTON — Following steep losses of the General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper in recent combat operations against Iran, Air Force officials are accelerating efforts to replace the venerable drone with a new unmanned aircraft at a price of $10 million each.

“As we get to the end of the MQ-9 life, there was some early talk of where do we want to go afterwards, and candidly, as a result of some of the losses that we’ve experienced in combat operations, that discussion sort of got accelerated,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the Air Force’s chief modernization officer, said in a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon today.

“So we want to bring this thing forward because of the fact that, although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” he added.

At least 45 Reapers, a quarter of the Pentagon’s inventory, have been lost since the launch of Operation Epic Fury in February, the Washington Post reported in August. The Reaper’s depletion has also left the Pentagon with few good, short-term options to quickly backfill losses.

The considerable exhaustion of the drone, which Air Force officials say can cost up to $50 million a piece depending on its payload, prompted the Pentagon to kickstart a new program in July, dubbed the Mass Modular Aircraft (MMA).

“I can’t buy an MMA today. The reality is, based on the budget and other constraints, that I’m not going to buy a whole lot of MQ-9Bs today either,” Niemi said, referring to an upgraded version of the Reaper known as the SkyGuardian. The MQ-9A ceased production last year.

“There’s a, I think, sort of a misconception that because the MQ-9B is in production, we can walk down there with a big fat check and have 100 of them this year. That’s not reality,” he added.

Air Force officials today laid out their vision for the new MMA drone after inviting bids from industry in July. That notice, posted by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, included targets like a one-way range of 8,000 nautical miles (about 9,206 miles), high degrees of modularity and both a producibility and price point that permits the Defense Department to tolerate losses. The goal, DIU said at the time, was to get 20 mission-ready drones by fiscal 2031.

Today, however, officials said they’ve been instructed to move faster and are “looking at options to do that,” Niemi said, without specifying exactly how quickly the new drone could be fielded. But “generally” speaking, according to Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, who serves as DIU’s military deputy, the DIU “intend[s] to get to a prototype within a year, [and] fielded at scale within three years.”

Niemi said the Air Force will probably field “at least 180” of the MMA drones.

Additionally, Niemi noted some ambitious cost targets: The Air Force is aiming to get the cost of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones to $20 million a piece, and MMA drones “closer to half of that,” he said. (The estimate includes only the cost of the air vehicle, without being fully missionized, according to an Air Force spokesperson.)

While noting that combatant commanders “love” the Reaper for features like long endurance and the ability to execute multiple missions such as reconnaissance and strike, Niemi emphasized that the drone itself isn’t necessarily all that unique.

“What makes the MQ-9 special has nothing to do with the aircraft itself. Like there is no cutting-edge technology for how fast it flies, how high it flies, how far it flies, all that is proven, decades-old technology. So, if you’re focusing on the truck, and you do it in a way where you’re able to make some smart design compromises … we do think you can drive the cost down,” Niemi said.

“You’re going to have to certainly give up something,” Niemi continued. “There’s no doubt if we try and pursue the exact same approach that we had with things like the MQ-9, we’re going to get something that costs about the same as an MQ-9.”

General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley in a statement to Breaking Defense said the Reaper’s “unique combination of endurance, payload, range, sensors, weapons, connectivity, adaptability and reliability is precisely what enables mission effects that others struggle to replicate.”

The company has “worked with the U.S. Air Force and other customers to hit cost targets for three decades and that won’t change, for any of our programs,” Brinkley added.

General Atomics is competing for the MMA program with a new design the company dubs Wildfire, which Brinkley said “addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank.”

Niemi emphasized that at least the initial versions of MMA largely won’t have “cutting-edge” technology. “I think it’s all going to be proven stuff, because that’s how I’m going to drive down the cost so I can get to that goal that I laid out,” he said.

Specifically, the MMA drone “is going to be an aircraft that has a long aspect wing, probably a turboprop, flies a very long way and carries a heavy weight.” The drone will likely be in the “4,000 miles-type class, so it’s going to fly much farther than CCA, but it’s going to fly slower and carry more weight,” Niemi said.

Lt. Gen. Luke Cropsey, the Air Force’s military deputy for acquisitions, said the MMA effort will in many ways mirror the ongoing CCA program. Air Force officials envision aircraft being developed in successive “increments,” for example, while using government reference architectures for hardware and software — enabling them to rapidly add new features instead of having to undergo more extensive block upgrades. Cropsey said the aircraft also needs to be designed so that its production can be scaled up fairly quickly if the moment demands.

Like the CCA program, where Anduril and General Atomics were both picked to produce drones for the effort’s first round, Niemi said officials “want to keep multiple companies in the game” to foster competition. He also said that officials are striving for the MMA drones to have higher levels of automation than the Reaper, with features like one operator being able to simultaneously control several of them.

“What I would like to have is multiple aircraft designs that go into production that can be operated with a common interface that’s more like mouse clicks and keyboard as opposed to stick and throttle, and I can have, whatever an MMA operator ends up looking like, fly all of them. That’s where I would like to go to,” Niemi said.

2026年8月28日，一架隶属于美国空军德克萨斯州空中国民警卫队第147攻击机联队的MQ-9“死神”无人机在冰岛凯夫拉维克空军基地执行“北方维京26”演习期间的搜救训练任务时起飞。（美国空军高级飞行员埃德加·格里马尔多摄）

华盛顿——由于通用原子公司生产的MQ-9A“死神”无人机在最近对伊朗的作战行动中损失惨重，空军官员正在加快用新型无人机取代这款老旧的无人机，每架新型无人机的价格为1000万美元。

“随着MQ-9无人机的退役，我们很早就开始讨论退役后的发展方向，坦白地说，由于我们在战斗行动中遭受了一些损失，这种讨论的进程加快了，”空军首席现代化官克里斯托弗·尼米中将今天在五角大楼向记者举行的新闻发布会上说。

“因此，我们希望推进此事，因为虽然我们现在拥有大量的MQ-9A无人机，但我们消耗它们的速度令我们担忧，”他补充道。

据《华盛顿邮报》8月报道，自2月份“史诗狂怒行动”启动以来，五角大楼至少损失了45架“死神”无人机，占其库存的四分之一。“死神”无人机的损耗也使得五角大楼几乎没有有效的短期方案来迅速弥补损失。

无人机的大量损耗（空军官员称，根据有效载荷的不同，每架无人机的成本可能高达 5000 万美元）促使五角大楼在 7 月份启动了一项名为“大规模模块化飞机”（MMA）的新计划。

“我今天买不起MMA。实际上，考虑到预算和其他限制，我今天也买不起很多MQ-9B，”尼米说道，他指的是“死神”无人机的升级版——“天空守护者”。MQ-9A已于去年停产。

“我认为，人们有一种误解，认为既然MQ-9B已经投入生产，我们就可以拿着一张大支票去那里，今年就能拿到100架。但事实并非如此，”他补充道。

空军官员今天公布了其新型MMA无人机的愿景，此前他们在7月份向业界发出了招标邀请。五角大楼国防创新部门发布的这份公告列出了诸多目标，例如单程航程达到8000海里（约9206英里）、高度模块化，以及生产能力和价格均能满足国防部承受损失的要求。国防创新部门当时表示，目标是在2031财年之前交付20架可执行任务的无人机。

然而，官员们今天表示，他们已接到指示加快进度，并且正在“研究各种方案”，尼米说道，但他并未具体说明新型无人机何时能够部署。不过，据国防情报局（DIU）军事副局长约瑟夫·昆克尔少将称，“总的来说”，DIU“计划在一年内完成原型机的研制，并在三年内实现大规模部署”。

尼米表示，空军可能会部署“至少 180 架”MMA 无人机。

此外，尼米还提到了一些雄心勃勃的成本目标：空军的目标是将协同作战飞机（CCA）无人机的单价控制在2000万美元以内，而多用途作战飞机（MMA）无人机的成本则“接近其一半”，他说道。（据空军发言人称，该估算仅包括飞行器本身的成本，尚未包含完整的任务配置。）

尼米指出，作战指挥官们“喜欢”死神无人机具有续航时间长、能够执行侦察和打击等多种任务等特点，但他强调，无人机本身并不一定那么独特。

“MQ-9 的特别之处与飞机本身无关。比如，它的飞行速度、飞行高度和飞行距离并没有什么尖端技术，这些都是经过验证的、已有数十年历史的技术。所以，如果你专注于卡车本身，并且能够做出一些巧妙的设计妥协……我们认为你可以降低成本，”尼米说道。

“你肯定要做出一些牺牲，”尼米继续说道。“毫无疑问，如果我们试图沿用开发MQ-9之类的项目时的做法，最终得到的产品成本将与MQ-9差不多。”

通用原子公司发言人 C·马克·布林克利在接受 Breaking Defense 采访时表示，“死神”无人机的“独特续航能力、有效载荷、射程、传感器、武器、连接性、适应性和可靠性组合，正是其能够实现其他无人机难以复制的任务效果的关键所在。”

布林克利补充说，该公司“三十年来一直与美国空军和其他客户合作，以​​实现成本目标，这一点对于我们的任何项目都不会改变”。

通用原子公司正凭借一款名为“野火”（Wildfire）的新设计参与MMA项目的竞标。布林克利表示，这款新设计“解决了MMA招标中提出的所有问题。我们可以提前数年交付，并保持同样的高质量。您可以拥有‘死神’（Reaper）的所有优点，甚至更多，而且价格实惠。”

尼米强调，至少在MMA的初期版本中，大部分不会采用“尖端”技术。“我认为所有技术都会是经过验证的，因为这样才能降低成本，从而实现我设定的目标，”他说。

具体来说，MMA无人机“将是一款采用长翼展机翼、可能搭载涡轮螺旋桨发动机、航程极远且载重能力强的飞行器。”尼米表示，这款无人机的航程可能达到“4000英里级别，因此它的飞行距离将远超CCA，但飞行速度会更慢，载重能力也会更强。”

空军负责采购的副司令卢克·克罗普西中将表示，MMA项目在很多方面都将与正在进行的CCA项目类似。例如，空军官员设想飞机将以“增量”的方式逐步开发，同时采用政府提供的硬件和软件参考架构——这样就可以快速添加新功能，而无需进行更大规模的模块化升级。克罗普西还表示，飞机的设计也必须能够使其生产规模在必要时迅速扩大。

与CCA项目类似，安杜里尔和通用原子公司都被选中参与第一轮无人机生产，尼米表示，官员们“希望多家公司参与竞争”。他还表示，官员们正努力使MMA无人机的自动化程度高于Reaper，例如，一名操作员可以同时控制多架无人机。

“我希望看到的是多种飞机设计投入生产，这些飞机可以使用类似鼠标和键盘的通用界面进行操作，而不是操纵杆和油门。这样，无论MMA操作员最终是什么样子，他们都能驾驶所有这些飞机。这就是我想要达到的目标，”尼米说道。