home Perimeter Security Border Control Predator Series Reach 4 Million Flying Hours

Predator Series Reach 4 Million Flying Hours

Oct 3, 2016

A US Air Force (USAF) MQ-1 Predator armed with an AGM-114 Hellfire missile and assigned to the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron (ERS), taxis out to the runway at Tallil Air Base (AB), Iraq, in support of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM.

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA‑ASI) announced that its Predator-series, including the MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper, and MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAV’s, has achieved a historic industry milestone: four million flight hours.

The milestone was crossed on August 7th, with 291,331 total missions completed and 90% of all missions flown in combat.

Missions include helping protect ground units on the battlefield; supporting U.S. Customs & Border Protection operations, and first responders in the wake of natural disasters. These aircraft systems continue to maintain the highest operational availability rates in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army aircraft inventories.

GA-ASI has produced over 770 aircraft to date and is currently building four UAV’s per month, with the capacity to triple production if needed.

Linden Blue, GA-ASI CEO said “Amassing four million flight hours is a testament to the reliability of our systems that are designed, built, and maintained by a dedicated group of skilled and innovative professionals”.

The identification of the specific aircraft and customer that achieved the milestone is unknown as every second of every day, an average of 70 Predator-class aircraft are airborne worldwide.

Flight hours have continued to grow at unprecedented rates in recent years, with 500,000 flight hours achieved from 1993 to 2008, one million hours in 2010, two million hours in 2012, and three million hours in 2014.

“The demand for persistent situational awareness using GA-ASI RPA is demonstrated daily through the increasing accumulation of flight hours. This demand is consistently answered by our team of employees, suppliers, and partners who work hard to meet our customers’ dynamic mission requirements” said David R. Alexander, president, Aircraft Systems, GA-ASI.

According to the company’s press release, their UAV’s are logging nearly 45,000 hours per month supporting the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, NASA, the Italian Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the French Air Force, and other customers.