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| Photo Business Wire |
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, announced on Monday that its Predator series of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) commonly known as drones, which includes the Predator, Predator B, Gray Eagle, Avenger and MQ-9B SkyGuardian lines, has surpassed six million flight hours. The aerospace firm said this milestone was achieved on October 31, 2019 with GA-ASI aircraft having completed 430,495 total missions with close to 90 percent of those missions flown in combat situations.
These RPA's are in use with the US Air Force, Army, Marine Corps as well as the US Department of Homeland Security and NASA. Non-US operators include the UK's Royal Air Force, Italian Air Force, French Air Force and the UAE Armed Forces,
“Six million flight hours is a testament to the reliability of our unmanned aircraft systems that are designed, built, and sustained by a dedicated group of skilled and innovative professionals for operations around the world,” said Linden Blue, CEO, GA-ASI. “In our more than 25 years in business, GA-ASI has achieved a list of historic ‘firsts’ in RPA development, and we have leveraged those accomplishments to better support our customer’s requirements.”
The identification of the specific aircraft and customer that achieved the milestone is unknown as every second of every day, 69 Predator-class Medium-altitude, Long-endurance (MALE) RPA are airborne throughout the world. Flight hours have continued to grow at unprecedented rates in recent years, with 500,000 flight hours achieved from 1993 to 2008, one million hours in 2010, two million hours in 2012, three million hours in 2014, four million hours in 2016 and five million in 2018.
“The demand for persistent situational awareness using our RPA is demonstrated daily through the accumulation of flight hours. The demand for our aircraft is consistently answered by our team of employees, suppliers, and partners who work hard to meet our customers’ dynamic mission requirements,” said David R. Alexander, president, GA-ASI. “Because of the dedication of our employees, our suppliers and partners, our aircraft have the highest mission capable rate in the USAF aircraft inventory.”
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