General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper Remotely Piloted Aircraft Family

The General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper is a turboprop-powered, long-endurance remotely piloted aircraft family developed for persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision-strike missions. First flown in 2001, it evolved from the Predator line and remains in active multi-mission service with the United States and international operators. NASA's Ikhana, a specially modified MQ-9 Predator B, also demonstrated civil research uses of the design. In the Western States Fire Missions of 2007–2009 it carried instruments for wildfire imaging and mapping. During a 2014 Hawaii deployment it surveyed monk seals, sea turtles, seabirds, vegetation, and marine debris with NOAA and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists. NASA records Ikhana's retirement in 2018; these experiments and that retirement concern the individual research aircraft.