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House Defense Appropriators Advise Restart of Air Force MQ-9 Buy, Add Six Reapers

House Defense Appropriators Advise Restart of Air Force MQ-9 Buy, Add Six Reapers
An MQ-9 Reaper with three Ghost Reaper pods attached awaits takeoff at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, N.Y. on April 14. The Air National Guard's Ghost Reaper concept is to make the MQ-9A Block 5 a central node for the Advanced Battle Management System. The three Ghost Reaper pods are the Northrop Grumman Freedom pod, the General Atomics' Centerline Avionics Bay, and the Ultra Electronics' Rosetta Echo Advanced Payloads (REAP) pod (U.S. Air National Guard Photo)

While the U.S. Air Force requested no funding for General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones in fiscal 2022, the House Appropriations Committee's defense panel's (HAC-D) version of the FY 2022 Defense Appropriations Bill adds six Reapers for the service. Overall, the bill would invest $351 million for 12 MQ-9s, including six requested by the U.S. Marine Corps for Medium Altitude Long Endurance-Tactical (MALE-T) close air support and communications. MALE-T is to provide "direct support to the Marine Littoral Regiment in peer-to-peer…

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