Over its 20 years of service, the MQ-9 Reaper drone has typically landed on paved runways, where it is rearmed and refueled by a large group of maintainers and support staff.
But a recent exercise saw Air Force Special Operations Command land an MQ-9 on a dirt strip in New Mexico on Dec. 16, where it was rearmed, refueled, and launched again by a small group of Airmen. The tactic is part of Agile Combat Employment, the Air Force’s strategy to send small groups of Airmen to many different remote or austere operating locations in a conflict with China or Russia so that they are more difficult to target.
“In the future fight, we assess we will no longer be able to rely exclusively on the main operating bases that have persisted,” the flight commander of the 1st Special Operations Mission Sustainment Team (SOMST), which met the Reaper on the ground, said in a Dec. 31 press release. The release did not state the commander’s name or rank.
“Operating in austere environments anytime, anyplace, and anywhere is critical,” the commander said. “It enables commanders to have options—something critically needed in special operations forces.”
Exercise Reaper Castillo took place at Melrose Air Force Range, N.M., near Cannon Air Force Base. A pilot and sensor operator controlled the drone from Hurlburt Field, Fla., more than 1,100 miles east.
Officials from the Hurlburt-based 1st Special Operations Wing told Air & Space Forces Magazine it could not say how many Airmen supported the MQ-9 at the dirt strip or how quickly they turned the aircraft around, citing security reasons. But they did say the Reaper needed no physical alternations to land on the dirt.
Reaper Castillo is the latest in a series of experiments to break the MQ-9 out of the conventional procedures and operations in which it has been used over the past 20 years.
Typically, Reaper missions involve crews operating the aircraft from ground control stations hundreds or thousands of miles away, while crews closer to the aircraft handle takeoff and landing, where the shorter signal delay reduces the chance for catastrophic error in those dangerous phases of flight.
But since at least 2021, the Air Force has begun to let the Reaper land itself using an autopilot function known as the automatic takeoff and landing capability (ATLC). That cuts the aircraft’s footprint by about 55 people and lot of equipment. Past exercises in New Mexico and the Pacific shrunk the footprint to just 10 Airmen and a pallet and a half of gear, small enough to fit aboard relatively light transports such as CV-22 Osprey and C-130 Hercules.
Besides auto takeoffs and landings, then-AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind said in 2023 that he envisioned a future where Reapers act as “capital ships” from which smaller uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) launch to establish a sensor grid or a communications pathway for the joint force.
The idea was part of a project known as adaptive airborne enterprise, where MQ-9s stretch beyond their traditional role as intelligence and strike platforms to become mobile control centers for a network of sensors, communications devices or loitering munitions for far-flung special operators.
“Can we establish a network that goes 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles?” Bauernfeind said. “I don’t know, we have to work the physics and the tactics, techniques, and procedures to find out how far we can push these networks out that will then give us that grid that we need to support the joint force.”
The vision became reality later that year, when a single crew at Cannon controlled three MQ-9s for about 30 minutes. Six days later, a crew air-launched two smaller drones from an MQ-9 and controlled them with an additional crew member. Reaper Castillo shows the capability could travel far from established bases.
“We have to break out of the mindset that we need a huge, paved runway with co-located launch and recovery aircrews,” the Reaper Castillo mission commander said in the Dec. 31 release. The commander’s rank and name were also not provided. “If we can free ourselves from the traditional mindset, it makes MQ-9 combat reach nearly limitless.”
Recent shootdowns of MQ-9s in the Middle East over the past few months are a reminder that the slow-moving Reaper may not be able to evade anti-air weapons in a near-peer conflict. Networks of smaller drones controlled by the Reaper may extend its reach and help keep the $30 million aircraft out of range of those weapons. Either way, it beats the risk of sending a human pilot to do the job, said the mission commander.
“The MQ-9 is extremely relevant in today’s fight and will be in the future as well,” the commander said. “It allows us to go places and do things that we cannot risk sending manned aircraft—such as high-threat environments.”
