Air Force museum unveils Reaper exhibit

Jason Lomberg, Technical Editor

Since 2007, the MQ-9 [1]Reaper [1] RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicle [2]) has been on the front lines of the war on terror. It scored its first kill [3] in October ’07, and has served a crucial role ever since. On Monday, the National Museum of the Air Force officially unveiled [4] its new MQ-9 Reaper exhibit.

The MQ-9 Reaper is the Predator [5]’s bigger, nastier cousin. At 36 feet long, and with a 66 foot wingspan, the Reaper features a 900 shaft horsepower turboprop engine (dwarfing the Predator's 115 hp (86 kW) piston engine) and a max payload of 3,750 lbs (vs. the Predator’s 450). The Reaper can climb to 50,000 feet, and has a max range of 3,682 miles. With a cruising speed of 230 MPH, this amounts to 14-16 hours in the air. The Predator chugs behind at 84 mph (up to 135 mph), with a max range of only 454 miles.

First MQ-9 Reaper at Creech AFB

The Museum will feature one of the two pre-production YMQ-9s (serial number 02-4002) sent to Afghanistan. In four years, it flew 3,266 combat hours and 254 combat sorties. The Reaper will be displayed near the RQ-4 Global Hawk [6] (surveillance craft) in the museum's Modern Flight Gallery [7].