Iranian air defenses have proven the long-range UAVs obsolete

The US military lost 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, or a quarter of its entire supply of the reconnaissance craft, during its war on Iran, the Washington Post has reported. The loss cost the US taxpayer an estimated $1.3 billion.

The loss figures were revealed by the Washington Post on Thursday, citing three unnamed US officials. A fourth US official told the newspaper that not all the lost drones were shot down. Some, they said, crashed after losing communications with their operators.

A successor to the MQ-1 Predator, the MQ-9 Reaper is a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) drone, capable of flying for up to 30 hours while carrying out surveillance missions or targeted strikes with Hellfire missiles. One of these craft costs between $30 and $50 million, and the US military had approximately 185 before the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28 - 165 in the Air Force, and 20 operated by the Marine Corps.

Within hours of the war beginning, reports of downed Reapers began circulating on Iranian Telegram channels. Video footage soon followed, with the Iranian military claiming to have shot down multiple MQ-9s mid-flight, and destroyed others as they sat in hangars at US bases across the Gulf region.

By the time the US and Iran reached a tentative ceasefire on April 9, preliminary reports in US media suggested that around two dozen Reapers had been shot down by Iranian forces. If the Washington Post's figures are accurate, the initial accounts may have undercounted the losses by almost half.

The MQ-9 Reaper entered service with the US Air Force in 2007, and was extensively used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the US' undeclared wars in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and beyond. Synonymous with President Barack Obama's drone assassination program, the MQ-9 Reaper was viewed as untouchable until 2017, when Houthi forces in Yemen managed to shoot one down with a Soviet-era anti-air missile.

A string of losses followed, and by the time the US and Israel began striking Iran in February, the Reaper was already considered obsolete and ineffective against any military with anti-air capabilities.

However, the US has no viable replacement for the Reaper. General Atomics stopped production of the drone in 2020, and the Pentagon is not expected to launch its program to select a successor until later this year. Meanwhile the Senate Armed Services Committee has recommended that MQ-9 production be restarted, while Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff David Tabor told a Senate hearing in June that the Pentagon is "looking at options to buy back as many of the MQ-9As as we possibly can" from US allies. 

The Reaper is one of multiple weapons systems left in short supply by the Iran war. The US has reportedly used more than half of its Patriot and 80% of its THAAD anti-air missiles, and a third of its Tomahawk cruise missiles since February 28. US President Donald Trump has denied that the US is facing a missile shortage, but has asked Congress for $87.6 billion to cover "urgent needs" related to the war, including $21 billion for munitions.