![]() Russia’s new Ivan Papanin-class multirole, icebreaking patrol vessels can be equipped with cruise missiles. Both Russia and China have built new fleets of ice breakers, some of them nuclear powered. Meanwhile, Russia has built or reopened several military bases on islands along its Arctic coastline. The Coast Guard has just one heavy ice breaker, and new ones authorized by Congress won’t be ready for several years. Coast Guard officials have said communications are sketchy or nonexistent in the latitudes above 72 degrees north, and the Navy has no ice-hardened ships. The Navy and Coast Guard are focusing on the Arctic region as a contested area fraught with extreme weather conditions, immense distances and limited infrastructure - there is no port for deep water vessels within 1,000 miles of Alaska’s Arctic coast. “And there’s a broad range of existing and new requirements that it could be used to fill in the future.” “Reaper is more relevant today than most of the other aircraft that are in development or on the ramp,” Stutzriem, the institute’s director of research, told a livestreamed audience at the paper’s Nov. Rather than send its entire 280-Reaper fleet to the boneyard by 2035, the Air Force should upgrade it for a list of new missions such as air and missile defense, and communications relays, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies recommends in a paper, “Reimagining the MQ-9 Reaper,” by retired Air Force Major Gen. ![]() While armed with Hellfire missiles, as well as ISR sensors and cameras, the RQ-9 has no defensive measures, except a counter-jamming pod, to keep it safe in contested airspace. Air Force wants to retire its MQ-9 Reapers by 2035 but an aerospace think tank says the drone fleet should be retained and modernized for new missions already challenging the sea services, such as maintaining domain awareness in the Arctic.įacing severe future budget constraints while trying to fund modernization programs like the B-21 long range strike bomber, Air Force planners are considering retiring legacy aircraft they believe cannot survive in a high-end fight, like General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and targeting drone. The MQ-9A completed 10,000 flight hours in support of Marine Corps Forces, Central Command operations on March 31, 2021. The Marine Corps’ first MQ-9A at an undisclosed location in the Central Command area of responsibility. ![]()
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