Armed Predator and Reaper drones have become the primary weapons in the fight against Pakistani militants. But they can be pricey; the Reapers come in at around a hundred million dollars each. Which is why the Air Force is working on a cheaper option: killer zombies.
Visit Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, and you'll see rows of obsolete F-4 Phantom II aircraft – or at least their gutted carcasses. This is the Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Center or AMARC -- whatever you do, don't call it the Boneyard. For many years, it has been common practice to resurrect these deceased planes as QF-4 unmanned drones, so that they can have a brief and undignified existence as "full-scale aerial targets." Everything in the inventory -- from Sidewinder missiles to Patriots -- have been tested on one at some point, even though some find it "kind of hard to shoot at such a magnificent aircraft."
Some 230 Phantoms have been through this resurrection process since 1995. It costs about $800,000 U.S. per aircraft. The tail and wingtips are painted orange to they can be easily distinguished from manned aircraft. Typically they are flown several times. Not all tests need to end in the plane being shot down, and there is an onboard scoring system to determine how close a warhead came. Up to six QF-4s can be flown together remotely by computer, maintaining tight formation using GPS. (Hey, how about a robotic version of the Blue Angels?)
But earlier this year, the zombie fleet got a new twist (see photo): one of them fired a modified High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile.
The High Speed Anti-radiation Missile, or HARM, locks on to the radar guidance of surface-to-air missiles. The QF-4 mission was simply to test the missile. When you're working with a new experimental high-powered rocket motor, it makes sense to keep humans as far away as possible. (Aircraft missile testing is a hazardous business – some may be familiar with Pete Purvis' account of shooting himself down with a Sparrow missile.)
Could this become more than a mere experiment? Well, the idea of attacking enemy air defenses with a drone seems like a life-saver. Doing it with a QF-4 drone sounds like a money-saver, too. Those HARM missiles cost over $300,000 each. If you have four of them on a QF-4, the whole package comes out to $2 million or so. That's a small fraction of a Reaper's price tag.
So maybe the undead QF-4 should get its revenge on the living and get to fire some missiles itself for a change. Let's hear it for the new Phantom Menace…
UPDATE: Air Force spokesman Ed Gulick got in touch to clarify the cost of the MQ-9 Reaper drone:
"Just a quick FYI on the actual cost of a Reaper. Our Reaper fact sheetshows the cost at $53.5 million (includes four aircraft with sensors) (fiscal 2006 dollars), so with inflation it’s between $13 or 14 million per Reaper. Much less than you state in your article. If you go 2 links from your story you’ll see the total cost incorporates much more than aircraft and sensor costs. That’s why it’s shown as such a high number."
It's a fair point, as I acknowledge in the reply to the fourth post below. The UK deal quoted includes all the associated hardware plus -
"…engineering support, test equipment, ground support, operational flight test support, communications equipment, technical assistance, personnel training/equipment, spare and repair parts, and other related elements of logistics support."
- so the bottom line to the British taxpayer is that they get are paying a billion dollars for package of ten Reapers plus all the necessary extras to keep them flying. The USAF are buying a different package with a very much lower unit cost.
And while the QF-4 "Killer Zombie" Phantom is a very different beast with very different capabilities to the Reaper, it still comes in at $800k rather than umpteen million.
