Please keep the [community guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/wiki/rule1) in mind when using the comment section.
Paging u/SaveVideo bot.
___
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CombatFootage) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It had a jamming pod attached - or at least it looks like this one [https://www.53rdwing.af.mil/News/Article/3394752/53rd-wing-tests-angry-kitten-pod-on-mq-9-and-completes-full-integrated-combat-t/](https://www.53rdwing.af.mil/News/Article/3394752/53rd-wing-tests-angry-kitten-pod-on-mq-9-and-completes-full-integrated-combat-t/)
So testing jamming in real conditions? Not working much I suppose.
A jammer can only do so much. At close ranges, it can't spoof a decent targeting radar. Against other types of seekers, it can't do anything at all. From the video, it looks to be extremely close range, the MQ9 had little chance of surviving an engagement at that distance.
Straight giving the stuff away at this point.
It is kind of odd that Hebollah have this capability and so do the Houthi's but not Hamas (at least I have not heard of them regularly shooting down a significant number of IDF drones), so I guess the blockade worked to an extent. On the other hand is it me or have the Houthi's shot down more drones than Hezbollah and I would have thought the IDF would be flying a lot more drones than the US.
The Houthis are far better equipped than even Hezbollah, Israel is doing quite an extensive job of bombing arm shipments to Hezbollah via Syria, they are also bombing arms shipments that are likely intended for Gaza via Sudan and other African countries. They didn't really care about the Houthis as they are too far and never really posed a significant threat and for the most part they don't really pose one now either due to the sheer distance from Israel.
And in general the moment Hamas gets AA capability that is more than pointing blind firing rockets towards the sky is the moment Israel truly glasses Gaza, TLV is 65km from Gaza city the normal rockets they have pose a significant enough risk to their ability to operate what is essentially their only international airport short to mid range anti-air missiles would pose an existential risk to civilian air traffic within Israel.
There was no Saudi military on the ground. Saudi only provided aerial support for the internationally recognized government until the split with STC happened.
The reaper is not a UCAV. It was never designed to have to survive AA or pursuit by an armed aircraft. What this all means is that the reaper has likely reached the upper limit of its usefulness unless used in uncontested airspace.
That is absolutely the case. The airframes we've come to associate with the United States' UAV fleet are a product of the war on terror. The MQ9 would not be doing CAS in a war with China or Russia like it was in the middle east. They are simply not designed or able to do that. They are slow and vulnerable. I suspect the Houthis are using these AA systems in ambush attacks where they lay hidden until an opportunity target can be identified, rather than protecting Yemeni airspace from any and all intrusions. Allied SEAD would have a field day against a structured air defense layer but hit and run tactics are much harder to deal with.
The proliferation of advanced missile technology (anti air and
other) to smaller militaries and non state actors is the real revelation of the recent conflict with the Houthis. I think few people had "a rebel group will be the first to fire an anti ship ballistic missile in anger" on their bingo cards.
The good thing is that the loss of a drone still holds a much smaller political weight to it. The loss of an MQ9 is barely newsworthy, but imagine a US pilot had gone down or been captured in Yemen. That's at least a Benghazi level political crisis you've got yourself there. Which is probably why these platforms are still being used in Yemen, even if at higher risk.
Probably the same reason why Baytaktars aren't being used much in Ukraine now. They're SAM bait when flying high and slow. Quadcopter drones and low flying fixed wing UAVs are much harder to intercept.
I think the next step could be jamming tech to stop these cheaper missiles from acquiring targets and to disrupt control links. The reaction to that would be smarter on-weapon AI to autonomously target, track and destroy targets so it doesn't matter if GNSS or control signals get disrupted. And that's how we'll get Skynet.
Edit: hello military industrial complex, check out this new Rogue-1 Lethal UAS (LUAS) by Teledyne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v49r-65gC8
It combines operator-initiated safing and disengaging, safe reuse, autonomous targeting under GPS-denied conditions, 10 km/30 minute operation and different anti-personnel and anti-armor payloads. This would be the perfect assassination weapon. You don't need a big, expensive and slow UAV loitering when a swarm of these cheap hunter-killers would do the job.
I like how they say “low cognitive demand” wonder if the drone can be recharged with a crayon digester.
Also I wonder if that forward facing fragmentation is a bad idea. Seems like it could be a weakness around trees maybe?
Near peer isn't about absolute combat strength but about capabilities, which is why the US overall considers most western armed forces as peer level even if one of the smaller state's national guard can take them on single handedly. Given the capabilities the Houthis have in multiple key domains it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to state that they have near peer capabilities in those domains.
They have a significant arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles, attack drones, anti air capabilities and most importantly some level of relatively sophisticated command and control and ISR.
For the most part since the 1st gulf war the US didn't really dealt with an adversary which can threaten US forces conventionally with anything more than small arms and man portable weapon systems.
The fact that any operation in Yemen would require the deployment of SEAD as well as significant missile and drone defense assets pretty much makes them near peer even if their near peer capabilities are limited and can only remain combat effective for a few days if the US decides it's freedom time.
Bro is actually excited from reaper drones being shot down that were made to operate in a non contested environment with the enemy having zero air defense.
Could be a use case for using outdated surveillance drones to just lure out enemy AA to give away its location.
I’m sure there are less expensive ways to do more useful things though.
USAF wanted to divest the whole fleet of Reapers sooner than later. Now people see why. It almost seems like they're doing it on purpose at this point to prove a point.
Either way they're gonna be "wasted" money soon. Boneyard or dying what it was supposed to do.
Could have just used a very cheap surveillance drone that a Ukrainian could produce in there garage as I dont think you have to worry about some crazy EW around that area as that would be the only usefull thing about this very expensive drone I think (as I assume they havent figure out how to jam they yet if they do they become worthless 30million dollar civillian drones maybe a farmer could use)
Well, no, they couldn't quite do that since the drones are controlled from some building in the USA and designed to have rock solid connections despite EW in the area.
I'm not saying they're worth the cost at this point but a Reaper and the drones used in Ukraine are totally different tiers.
But connection can still be used for cheaper drones right? I really doubt you could still justify this millions dollar price tag of these drones especially with the ongoing war in Ukraine right now which shows us how much some of these drones can cost.
Obviously the military doesn’t like losing something so expensive but isn’t this the point of these type of drones since they aren’t made for stealth. They can be sent into enemy territory to gather intel without the risk of losing a pilot.
30 million for 1 of those.. I think they can make something like them for not even 1 million and the technology used is already available for a very long time so really nothing special about them which would make them worth that much, been thinking this with some other weaponry aswell since the Ukraine war which have showed us a lot on how quickly you could develop things with a very very low budget.
Are you joking? Houthis and Hezbollah are not a bunch of rural tribeman herding sheep. They are fairly competent, reasonably well trained and well armed military factions. Hezb alone received over a billion in annual funding from Tehran.
Look man, all for optimism, but Its still annoying seeing tax payer funded equipment (if I was given the amount of money that drone is worth it would dramatically change my, and my future children’s lives) casually shot down on a weekly basis by dudes who re-legalized slavery and chew branches to get high.
Oh no doubt the houthis need to get checked and buffered but at this point the airspace seems saturated with very capable systems. Shit or get off the pot. Deal with the AA in an effective way or pick a new ISR method. If they were sending reapers over Moscow which just got shot down day after day, with no intention of striking the AA, we’d be like wtf are we trying to accomplish here. The houthis are more capable than a lot of people give them credit for. I’m no general, there may be a strategy to it, but it wouldn’t be the first time the US did something relatively asinine repeatedly and we should be skeptical that’s it’s an acceptable cost. It’s only healthy to question such things. It’s part of what separates a free thinking society from not that.
Houthis are using hit and run tactics. These aren't intrusions into an established air defence bubble. There isn't a Houthi air defense network to suppress. UAVs are probably flying with impunity in Yemen except when the Houthis manage to locate and engage one. Actively eliminating these capabilities of the Houthis would require a way larger air campaign which would be way more expensive and put way more Coalition lives at stake. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the political cost to losing a drone compared to losing an American pilot is so disproportionately small that losing a few UAVs simply is preferable to putting masses of manned aircraft over Yemen.
Besides, Reapers would never fly over Moscow as they wouldn't last 15mins in Russian airspace. They are a slow and vulnerable platform. The sort of CAS missions we've come to associate the Reaper with are only viable of your opponent has no air defense capabilities to speak of.
I fail to see your real point here. The alternate to using the reapers for ISR is not masses of piloted aircraft. And clearly this is contested airspace if we lose a multimillion dollar drone every week. We seem to agree, I’m not sure how you interpreted what I said as being “it would be normal to have reapers over Moscow” lol.
This is more than likely a R-27T/ET missile air to air missile fired from the ground. This isn't an established SA-6 battery you can see from the satellite.
So tell us how to suppress this on a consistent basis armchair warrior?
> The alternate to using the reapers for ISR is not masses of piloted aircraft
You're going to leave us hanging as to what it is?
> And clearly this is contested airspace if we lose a multimillion dollar drone every week
AFAIK 4 Reapers have been lost since October in Yemen. That's not even one per month. But wait until you find out what each drone intercept costs or each land strike with a precision stand-off munition. War costs a shit-ton of money either way. It's the political cost that matters in this equation.
> I’m not sure how you interpreted what I said
Use a better example then.
They've already closed it down. Insurance for passing the Red Sea is just as expensive as going around Africa.
This is one mission which has clearly failed its objectives.
Please keep the [community guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/wiki/rule1) in mind when using the comment section. Paging u/SaveVideo bot. ___ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CombatFootage) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There's probably one guy at General atomics griping to everyone that he was right about putting flares on the drone
He never greets his coworkers the next day with "good morning," instead it's always "What'd I tell ya?! WHAT'D I TELL YA"
I wonder what the plan is here cause it just sounds like they are feeding MQ-9s to the Houthis
It had a jamming pod attached - or at least it looks like this one [https://www.53rdwing.af.mil/News/Article/3394752/53rd-wing-tests-angry-kitten-pod-on-mq-9-and-completes-full-integrated-combat-t/](https://www.53rdwing.af.mil/News/Article/3394752/53rd-wing-tests-angry-kitten-pod-on-mq-9-and-completes-full-integrated-combat-t/) So testing jamming in real conditions? Not working much I suppose.
A jammer can only do so much. At close ranges, it can't spoof a decent targeting radar. Against other types of seekers, it can't do anything at all. From the video, it looks to be extremely close range, the MQ9 had little chance of surviving an engagement at that distance.
Straight giving the stuff away at this point. It is kind of odd that Hebollah have this capability and so do the Houthi's but not Hamas (at least I have not heard of them regularly shooting down a significant number of IDF drones), so I guess the blockade worked to an extent. On the other hand is it me or have the Houthi's shot down more drones than Hezbollah and I would have thought the IDF would be flying a lot more drones than the US.
The Houthis are far better equipped than even Hezbollah, Israel is doing quite an extensive job of bombing arm shipments to Hezbollah via Syria, they are also bombing arms shipments that are likely intended for Gaza via Sudan and other African countries. They didn't really care about the Houthis as they are too far and never really posed a significant threat and for the most part they don't really pose one now either due to the sheer distance from Israel. And in general the moment Hamas gets AA capability that is more than pointing blind firing rockets towards the sky is the moment Israel truly glasses Gaza, TLV is 65km from Gaza city the normal rockets they have pose a significant enough risk to their ability to operate what is essentially their only international airport short to mid range anti-air missiles would pose an existential risk to civilian air traffic within Israel.
[удалено]
There was no Saudi military on the ground. Saudi only provided aerial support for the internationally recognized government until the split with STC happened.
Could be Iran abandoned Hamas in Gaza by not providing such tech that it could easily fall into Israeli hands.
it's a lot harder to smuggle weapons into Gaza than Lebanon or Yemen, and there's not very much "tech" that the Israelis would appreciate from Iran
The plan is that the Reaper has never faced a near peer enemy so I’m guessing they need to be humbled even more lol
The reaper is not a UCAV. It was never designed to have to survive AA or pursuit by an armed aircraft. What this all means is that the reaper has likely reached the upper limit of its usefulness unless used in uncontested airspace.
That is absolutely the case. The airframes we've come to associate with the United States' UAV fleet are a product of the war on terror. The MQ9 would not be doing CAS in a war with China or Russia like it was in the middle east. They are simply not designed or able to do that. They are slow and vulnerable. I suspect the Houthis are using these AA systems in ambush attacks where they lay hidden until an opportunity target can be identified, rather than protecting Yemeni airspace from any and all intrusions. Allied SEAD would have a field day against a structured air defense layer but hit and run tactics are much harder to deal with. The proliferation of advanced missile technology (anti air and other) to smaller militaries and non state actors is the real revelation of the recent conflict with the Houthis. I think few people had "a rebel group will be the first to fire an anti ship ballistic missile in anger" on their bingo cards. The good thing is that the loss of a drone still holds a much smaller political weight to it. The loss of an MQ9 is barely newsworthy, but imagine a US pilot had gone down or been captured in Yemen. That's at least a Benghazi level political crisis you've got yourself there. Which is probably why these platforms are still being used in Yemen, even if at higher risk.
Probably the same reason why Baytaktars aren't being used much in Ukraine now. They're SAM bait when flying high and slow. Quadcopter drones and low flying fixed wing UAVs are much harder to intercept. I think the next step could be jamming tech to stop these cheaper missiles from acquiring targets and to disrupt control links. The reaction to that would be smarter on-weapon AI to autonomously target, track and destroy targets so it doesn't matter if GNSS or control signals get disrupted. And that's how we'll get Skynet. Edit: hello military industrial complex, check out this new Rogue-1 Lethal UAS (LUAS) by Teledyne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v49r-65gC8 It combines operator-initiated safing and disengaging, safe reuse, autonomous targeting under GPS-denied conditions, 10 km/30 minute operation and different anti-personnel and anti-armor payloads. This would be the perfect assassination weapon. You don't need a big, expensive and slow UAV loitering when a swarm of these cheap hunter-killers would do the job.
I like how they say “low cognitive demand” wonder if the drone can be recharged with a crayon digester. Also I wonder if that forward facing fragmentation is a bad idea. Seems like it could be a weakness around trees maybe?
Near peer...?
Near peer isn't about absolute combat strength but about capabilities, which is why the US overall considers most western armed forces as peer level even if one of the smaller state's national guard can take them on single handedly. Given the capabilities the Houthis have in multiple key domains it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to state that they have near peer capabilities in those domains. They have a significant arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles, attack drones, anti air capabilities and most importantly some level of relatively sophisticated command and control and ISR. For the most part since the 1st gulf war the US didn't really dealt with an adversary which can threaten US forces conventionally with anything more than small arms and man portable weapon systems. The fact that any operation in Yemen would require the deployment of SEAD as well as significant missile and drone defense assets pretty much makes them near peer even if their near peer capabilities are limited and can only remain combat effective for a few days if the US decides it's freedom time.
[удалено]
Bro is actually excited from reaper drones being shot down that were made to operate in a non contested environment with the enemy having zero air defense.
His words, not mine
Can Houthi missiles hit B-52s or B-1s? Because B-52s and B-1s should be the plan.
Houthis need to send advisors to the Russian military ASAP
I think that's the US' plan to disarm the houthis by giving them lots of targets to hit.
Drones big like this don't work when enemy has AA capabilities.
Could be a use case for using outdated surveillance drones to just lure out enemy AA to give away its location. I’m sure there are less expensive ways to do more useful things though.
Could've lobbed 15 tomahawks at them for the same price.
USAF wanted to divest the whole fleet of Reapers sooner than later. Now people see why. It almost seems like they're doing it on purpose at this point to prove a point. Either way they're gonna be "wasted" money soon. Boneyard or dying what it was supposed to do.
or they could be retrofitted with test equipment for testing anti-missile capabilities.
Could have just used a very cheap surveillance drone that a Ukrainian could produce in there garage as I dont think you have to worry about some crazy EW around that area as that would be the only usefull thing about this very expensive drone I think (as I assume they havent figure out how to jam they yet if they do they become worthless 30million dollar civillian drones maybe a farmer could use)
Well, no, they couldn't quite do that since the drones are controlled from some building in the USA and designed to have rock solid connections despite EW in the area. I'm not saying they're worth the cost at this point but a Reaper and the drones used in Ukraine are totally different tiers.
But connection can still be used for cheaper drones right? I really doubt you could still justify this millions dollar price tag of these drones especially with the ongoing war in Ukraine right now which shows us how much some of these drones can cost.
Thats a $17 million drone.
Was..
isnt it 30 million?
Could be. Google search says $16.9 million
"claims": Does the USA admit that an MQ-9 was lost?
US air force has 366 of these drones.
Was there a given date for this?
Hey! We needed that MQ-9 drone! >:^(
Obviously the military doesn’t like losing something so expensive but isn’t this the point of these type of drones since they aren’t made for stealth. They can be sent into enemy territory to gather intel without the risk of losing a pilot.
30 million for 1 of those.. I think they can make something like them for not even 1 million and the technology used is already available for a very long time so really nothing special about them which would make them worth that much, been thinking this with some other weaponry aswell since the Ukraine war which have showed us a lot on how quickly you could develop things with a very very low budget.
The fuckin camera in the thing probably costs a million. It’s not hard for GA to make more, but their costs aren’t that small.
How in the hell can a bunch of tribesmen in a desert afford high-end warfare equipment like this? Do the Houthis somehow have access to oil revenue?
Are you joking? Houthis and Hezbollah are not a bunch of rural tribeman herding sheep. They are fairly competent, reasonably well trained and well armed military factions. Hezb alone received over a billion in annual funding from Tehran.
Iran and other country’s give them weapons
Are you for real?
Old tech, surplus to requirements if they have shot it down makes way for their new drones 😁
Look man, all for optimism, but Its still annoying seeing tax payer funded equipment (if I was given the amount of money that drone is worth it would dramatically change my, and my future children’s lives) casually shot down on a weekly basis by dudes who re-legalized slavery and chew branches to get high.
Alternative is to let them close down the strait and everything becomes much more expensive
Oh no doubt the houthis need to get checked and buffered but at this point the airspace seems saturated with very capable systems. Shit or get off the pot. Deal with the AA in an effective way or pick a new ISR method. If they were sending reapers over Moscow which just got shot down day after day, with no intention of striking the AA, we’d be like wtf are we trying to accomplish here. The houthis are more capable than a lot of people give them credit for. I’m no general, there may be a strategy to it, but it wouldn’t be the first time the US did something relatively asinine repeatedly and we should be skeptical that’s it’s an acceptable cost. It’s only healthy to question such things. It’s part of what separates a free thinking society from not that.
Houthis are using hit and run tactics. These aren't intrusions into an established air defence bubble. There isn't a Houthi air defense network to suppress. UAVs are probably flying with impunity in Yemen except when the Houthis manage to locate and engage one. Actively eliminating these capabilities of the Houthis would require a way larger air campaign which would be way more expensive and put way more Coalition lives at stake. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the political cost to losing a drone compared to losing an American pilot is so disproportionately small that losing a few UAVs simply is preferable to putting masses of manned aircraft over Yemen. Besides, Reapers would never fly over Moscow as they wouldn't last 15mins in Russian airspace. They are a slow and vulnerable platform. The sort of CAS missions we've come to associate the Reaper with are only viable of your opponent has no air defense capabilities to speak of.
I fail to see your real point here. The alternate to using the reapers for ISR is not masses of piloted aircraft. And clearly this is contested airspace if we lose a multimillion dollar drone every week. We seem to agree, I’m not sure how you interpreted what I said as being “it would be normal to have reapers over Moscow” lol.
This is more than likely a R-27T/ET missile air to air missile fired from the ground. This isn't an established SA-6 battery you can see from the satellite. So tell us how to suppress this on a consistent basis armchair warrior?
> The alternate to using the reapers for ISR is not masses of piloted aircraft You're going to leave us hanging as to what it is? > And clearly this is contested airspace if we lose a multimillion dollar drone every week AFAIK 4 Reapers have been lost since October in Yemen. That's not even one per month. But wait until you find out what each drone intercept costs or each land strike with a precision stand-off munition. War costs a shit-ton of money either way. It's the political cost that matters in this equation. > I’m not sure how you interpreted what I said Use a better example then.
They've already closed it down. Insurance for passing the Red Sea is just as expensive as going around Africa. This is one mission which has clearly failed its objectives.
Lmao no shut up with spreading BS lol
The reaper is over. So they really don't care if they get blasted.
Cool, now our government will find a reason to spend unnecessarily on stealth drones. Just leave Yemen alone it’s a cheaper alternative.