Weaponised Block 5: France ramps up Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle operations

摘要

On 15 December 2019, a French-operated medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) deployed a munition for the first time. A GBU-12 guided bomb was launched over Africa by a French Air Force General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) MQ-9 Reaper Block 1. No military objective was targeted and the launch was experimental, conducted over a training area, and aimed at proving that the French UAVs were now capable of kinetic strikes. The first operational strike took place a few days later, on 21 December. The introduction of this new capability was the result of an effort triggered in September 2017 when the minister for the armed forces, Florence Parly, announced that she had decided France's Reapers should be weaponised.