First Look At General Atomics’ Wildfire, Its Successor To The MQ-9 Reaper

General Atomics has given us the first look at its new Wildfire drone design. The company is developing this armed medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) uncrewed aircraft in response to new U.S. Air Force requirements for a lower-cost successor to the MQ-9A Reaper.

A rendering of Wildfire was included in a video montage, seen below, which General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI) released earlier today. GA-ASI first announced work on this new drone last month. The Air Force, in partnership with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), formally kicked off its new search for a Reaper successor, currently called the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), in July. GA-ASI also developed the MQ-9A, which is now out of production.

Wildfire’s pusher-prop design shown is clearly an extension of the existing MQ-9 family, with an overall planform that is extremely similar to that of the Reaper. Like the latest versions of the MQ-9A, the new drone has a sensor turret under the nose and a large blade antenna under the rear fuselage.

The rendering of Wildfire, at top, seen together with a stock picture of a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper, at bottom. General Atomics capture/USAF

Wildfire does notably lack the Reaper’s distinctive hump on top of the forward fuselage. On the MQ-9A, this feature contains the drone’s satellite communications (SATCOM) antenna. What this might mean about how Wildfire is controlled and otherwise communicates is not immediately clear, but it points to the use of a smaller, lower-cost SATCOM terminal. That, in turn, would most likely be tied to a network like Starshield, the government-focused cousin of SpaceX’s Starlink. We could also see greater semi-autonomous control here, or at least a greater reliance on it.

The resulting shape of the forward end of the fuselage is vaguely reminiscent of GA-ASI’s Gnat series of drones from the 1990s, which evolved into the iconic Predator. The MQ-9 family, in turn, is an outgrowth of the Predator.

A close-up look at the nose end of Wildfire as seen in the newly released rendering. General Atomics capture

A General Atomics Improved Gnat (I-Gnat) drone. General Atomics

The rendering of Wildfire also depicts the drone armed with four Joint Strike Missile (JSM) cruise missiles, with two loaded on what appears to be a single pylon under each wing. The stealthy JSM can be employed as an anti-ship or land-attack weapon. GA-ASI has released renderings of MQ-9s in the past with similar loadouts. The Air Force is already acquiring stocks of JSMs, primarily to arm its F-35A Joint Strike Fighters. Stand-off munitions like the JSM have long been seen as an increasingly important, if not critical, addition to the non-stealth Reaper’s arsenal, helping to keep the drones further away from potential threats.

A close look at two of JSMs in the Wildfire rendering. General Atomics capture

TWZ has reached out to General Atomics for more details.

“General Atomics is looking at it and asking ourselves, ‘What can we really do? No kidding, no BS, actually do,’” GA-ASI spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley did tell us back in August when asked about Wildfire. “Let’s be honest with ourselves first. How do we come out of the box, day one, with a 10,000-nautical-mile ferry range? Can we carry four LRASMs [AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles]? Can we swarm 100 aircraft under semi-autonomous control? Can we fuse all of that data into a highly effective common operating picture? Can we do that at scalable, affordable mass?”

“So that was the assignment, and our engineers sharpened their pencils and got to work,” he added. “What came out the other side was our new Wildfire UAS. That thing is a beast, and no one who actually does this for a living and is honestly concerned about America’s warfighting edge can look at it and not want 100 of them as fast as we can make them.”

Wildfire “addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank,” Brinkley also told Breaking Defense for a story published last week.

In terms of what the Air Force has said it is looking for with the MMA, as we have previously written:

“[The service] …wants the MMA drone to perform the same general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions as the MQ-9A. To that end, stated program requirements to date include a speed of at least 200 knots true airspeed, a munition and sensor payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, the ability to self-deploy one-way at least 8,000 nautical miles, and the ability to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet. The MMAs also need to be highly modular and use open architecture mission systems to make it easier to integrate new capabilities and functionality down the line.”

Another look at an example of a typical MQ-9A Reaper in US Air Force service now. USAF

The Air Force also shared last week that it is targeting a roughly $10 million unit cost for the MMA drones, not including sensors and certain other systems. As mentioned, the Reaper is out of production, but the price tag on a fully-equipped Reaper today is widely reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force has itself used the $50 million figure as a reference point in discussing its latest plans for what comes after the MQ-9.

It is unclear how Wildfire might achieve this cost goal while retaining so much obvious Reaper DNA, but even a major 30 to 50 percent reduction in the price tag compared to its predecessor would be a huge deal. In the past, General Atomics’ Brinkley has openly questioned just how cheap an MMA drone could realistically be while still offering comparable capability to MQ-9.

The original timeline for the MMA program envisioned the Air Force reaching initial operational capability in 2031 after receiving 20 of the drones. The service is now looking to accelerate that schedule by around two years. The Air Force expects to eventually acquire around 180 MMAs.

The Air Force has tried, without success, to develop a successor to the MQ-9 on several occasions in the past. However, a key driving factor now is huge losses of Reapers in the course of the ongoing conflict against Iran. The service’s MQ-9 fleet has already shrunk dramatically in recent years, in part due to additional losses during operations targeting Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen last year.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s Chief Modernization Officer, told reporters at a roundtable at the Pentagon last week, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s not a lot of good options to immediately replace those aircraft.”

GA-ASI has long had a monopoly on MALE combat drone sales in the United States, and is clearly looking to extend that now with Wildfire. However, this market space has been expanding, and other companies are already competing for what could be a very lucrative new deal with the Air Force. Winning the MMA contract could open doors to opportunities elsewhere within the U.S. government and with foreign countries. Variants and derivatives of the MQ-9 are also in service today with the U.S. Marine Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and several additional air arms globally.

A US Marine Corps MQ-9A Reaper. USMC

More information about Wildfire, as well as its competitors, is only likely to continue emerging as the Air Force pushes ahead with new and aggressive plans to finally acquire a follow-on drone to the venerable Reaper.

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