GA-ASI’s MQ-9B Remotely Piloted Aircraft.
The advancement of unmanned systems is spreading around the world.
Calling it a “revolution” does not overstate the case. The most advanced users of medium-altitude, remotely piloted aircraft are doing new things in ways they never could before.
Making it possible is the next-generation MQ-9B SkyGuardian® and SeaGuardian® manufactured by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. As these aircraft grow in number and take on an increasing diversity of missions worldwide, they’re changing the way professionals conduct maritime domain awareness, anti-submarine warfare, rescue, and many other roles.
Leveraging a strong legacy of innovation
Remotely piloted aircraft already changed the world once. What MQ-9B does today is thanks partly to the experience derived from those earlier-model aircraft, including the MQ-9A Reaper and MQ-1 Predator. That fleet has recorded more than 8 million operational hours globally, many of them in combat, providing a huge trove of experience that informed the design of the new system.
This combination of proven performance with new design and technology is what makes MQ-9B stand apart. Operational today, it leads its category and incurs much less cost or risk than a design from a clean sheet. In every environment, in all four corners of the earth, the aircraft are actively proving what they can do.
U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, for example, uses MQ-9B to pioneer a new regime for integrating large, medium, and small unmanned aircraft. With a large central fuselage and a broad wingspan, the SkyGuardian makes an optimal mothership for other aircraft, such as GA-ASI’s Sparrowhawk® – which it can launch and recover in mid-flight – or others.
Here’s a look at how GA-ASI’s aerial recovery system enables mid-flight launch and recovery.
MQ-9B shown recovering GA-ASI’s Sparrowhawk, a small UAS that extends warfighter capability in contested battlespace.
Purpose built to be multi-purpose
American special operations personnel need intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; route clearance; early warning; communications; and many other types of support during their missions. What AFSOC is showing with MQ-9B is how unmanned aircraft of various sizes can combine in novel ways to provide that.
Through complex exercises off the West Coast of the United States, the U.S. Navy has likewise shown that adding highly capable new remotely piloted aircraft changes the old way of doing business. MQ-9B aircraft, contracted for major fleet exercises, have responded to crisis calls, escorted carrier strike groups, served as communications relays for ships at sea, and also helped prosecute simulated hostile submarines.
The SeaGuardian’s unmatched endurance means it can stay on station longer than any human-crewed aircraft ever could, which gives unblinking eyes and unfailing ears to crews hunting for submarines.
In one exercise, Navy helicopters sortied from San Diego, dropped sonobuoys – ocean-riding sensors that can detect submarine targets – and then MQ-9B SeaGuardian took over monitoring them. It wasn’t long before the aircraft monitored the detection of a simulated submarine. This meant other helicopters could deploy to the scene armed with precise data about the target’s location and course – and then go in for the attack.
Changing the world for good
Key American allies are benefiting from these same key capabilities.
The UK’s Royal Air Force is taking delivery of its variant of the aircraft, called the Protector RG Mk1, which is based at RAF Waddington north of London. The British government plans a broad range of missions for the system, ranging from military operations abroad to help with security and rescue around Great Britain itself.
“Protector will be able to undertake a wide range of tasking, including land and maritime surveillance to track threats, counter terrorism, and support to UK civil authorities, such as assisting HM Coastguard with search and rescue missions,” the RAF says.
Deliveries of the RAF’s MQ-9B variant, Protector RG Mk1, herald a new era of defense security for the UK.
For another example of the way MQ-9B is transforming rescue and security roles, look no further than the Japan Coast Guard, which flies the aircraft to assure maritime domain awareness around the Japanese home islands.
Likewise with the Indian Navy, which has logged tens of thousands of operational hours on its aircraft in missions that have transformed its ability to see and respond around the Indian Ocean.
In early January, a cargo vessel in the Arabian Sea issued a distress call: it was being boarded by armed men. One of the first assets to arrive was the Indian Navy’s MQ-9B SeaGuardian, which helped coordinate initial assessments of the hijacked vessel and overwatch the rest of the Indian Navy’s response.
MQ-9B’s ability to remain on station for many hours and its high-definition video and other sensing capabilities gave Indian Navy commanders the ability to watch in real time as other ships and aircraft deployed and a team of naval special operators boarded the ship.
MQ-9B doesn’t require warm, equatorial conditions to deliver these kinds of capabilities. Its newest user is the Royal Canadian Air Force, which has selected the platform to serve as its new flagship multi-mission patrol aircraft. This milestone award followed dedicated cold weather validation testing in which GA-ASI engineers proved the aircraft’s de-icing, cold engine start, and other features would be up to the job in helping secure Canada’s sprawling Arctic territory.
All of these nations are finding that MQ-9B enables new ways of taking on their toughest missions – and more are poised to follow suit.
