Pentagon Has Lost 45 MQ-9 Reaper Drones Since Iran War Began, Officials Confirm

Since Operation Epic Fury began against Iran in February, the U.S. military has lost at least 45 of its MQ-9 Reaper drones, according to three U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Post. That's roughly 25 percent of the entire pre-war fleet. Before the war started, the Air Force and Marine Corps together operated about 185 Reapers: 165 in the Air Force, 20 in the Marine Corps, according to public budget figures cited by the Post. None of the Marine Corps drones have been lost, a Marine spokesman, Lt. Col. Joshua Benson, told the paper. Those aircraft are deployed mainly in the Asia-Pacific, far from the fight. Each Reaper runs $30 million to $50 million depending on its sensors and weapons load, according to the Air Force. Do the math on 45 aircraft and you're looking at a potential taxpayer bill north of $1.3 billion, just for this one weapons system. Not every drone was shot down. A fourth official told the Post that an unspecified number crashed after operators simply lost their communications link with the aircraft. Some of these losses are combat kills by Iran and its proxies. Some are technical failures that have nothing to do with enemy fire. The Jerusalem Post reported that a defense official said in July that Iran had downed roughly 30 Reapers by that point, and Tehran has claimed credit for shooting down U.S. drones repeatedly since the war began in February. The Reapers have been flying heavily around the Strait of Hormuz, one of the hottest zones of the war. They're useful for surveillance and precision strikes, but they're slow and fly at low altitude. That makes them, in plain terms, sitting ducks for Iranian air defenses and Iran-backed milit