100th Aircraft Produced

The bad guys don't like them but who else wouldn't marvel at an unmanned aircraft? Well, don't answer that.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of unmanned aircraft systems, announced Thursday that it has produced the one-hundredth Predator remotely piloted aircraft for the U.S. Air Force.

As the company describes it, "Integrated with the most advanced command and control technology as well as the latest multi-targeting sensor package, Predator 100 represents the multi-mission capabilities which are deployed in combat today."

In other words, this is one tough cookie.

Predator has provided the U.S. with intelligence, surveillance, targeting and reconnaissance information on combat areas deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans since 1995, logging over sixty percent of all its flight hours in combat.

Predator is also in use by the U.S. Navy and Italian Air Force. 

Predator 100, like its predecessors, will be flown on an instrument flight plan in National Air Space from the company’s flight operations facility in California to Indian Springs Air Force Base in Nevada for delivery to the U.S. Air Force.

The U.S. Air Force is also developing and building the pre-production MQ-9 Hunter Killer Predator B prop jet aircraft.

Mariner, a variant of the Predator B, is equipped with color and infrared cameras plus a surface search radar, which will allow the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard and the Homeland Security organization to cost-effectively monitor the oceans areas of the world and maritime approaches to the United States.

FMI:  www.uav.com