[url]http://www.uvonline.com/cgi-bin/view?t=N&r=N/1221[/url]

Predator Attrition Rate Almost 50%
03/01/2003 12:25

According to Mike Mount of CNN’s Washington Bureau, nearly half the US Air Force's (USAF) fleet of RQ-1 Predator surveillance and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have met with accidents or been shot down since it entered service in 1994, most recently on 31 December 2002 during a maintenance test flight in Pakistan.

Since August 2001, the USAF has reportedly lost nine Predators in the operational theatres of Iraq and Afghanistan, the latest being in the no-fly zone over southern Iraq on 23 December 2002 when Iraq claimed that one of its fighter aircraft had shot the UAV down at 15h35 ‘in a delicate and planned operation’.

MQ-1 Predators armed with Hellfire AGM-114, operating from Kuwait, are known to have been used in recent attacks on Iraqi air defence systems in this no-fly zone. It has not been established whether the downed Predator was an RQ-1 or MQ-1 variant.

Air Force officials said they do not see a slowdown in the use of Predator due to the rate of attrition. Depending on who you talk to, USAF officials are saying that the Air Force is scheduled to receive as many as two new Predators (unspecified: RQ-1 and/or MQ-1) each month during 2003. However, according to Jane's Defence Weekly the USAF has awarded General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) a US$ 28 million contract for 12 MQ-1 Predators which runs to April 2004.

This week, the Pentagon directed an unspecified number of Predators based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada be readied for deployment to the US Central Command, which oversees activities in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Probably just carpet bomb the area I would think.