High-flying drone downed by Russian jet was developed by San Diego defense contractor

The remotely piloted drone that a Russian jet knocked down over the Black Sea on Tuesday was an MQ-9 Reaper, a highly sensitive, widely used surveillance and weapons platform developed by General Atomics in San Diego.

The U.S. military says a Russian fighter plane clipped the propeller of the drone, forcing it to crash. Russia offered a very different account, claiming the American aircraft went down on its own.

“It is a small prop plane that a Russian jet would be able to bump out of the air,” said Jesse Driscoll, a University of California San Diego political scientist who has been studying the former Soviet Union and its neighbors for the past 20 years.

“This is an important asset that can linger in the air for long periods of time and quietly perform surveillance. When it needs to refuel we send it back and replace it with another.

“They’ve been used for a long time by the CIA and the U.S. military to do anti-terrorism missions,” he said. “They’re used all over the world.”

The planes are 36 feet long and have a wing span of 66 feet. General Atomics says the drone can reach altitudes up to 50,000 feet and stay in the air for 27 hours. The drone also can be outfitted with laser-guided missiles.

The aircraft evolved from General Atomics’ MQ-1 Predator, which helped revolutionize airborne surveillance in the 1990s by demonstrating its ability to spy on places where it is too dangerous to send in civilian and military personnel.

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In September 2000, the CIA, Air Force and General Atomics used one of the Predators to find Osama bin Laden near Kandahar, Afghanistan. He ended up eluding U.S. forces. But the episode underscored the value of unmanned aerial vehicles.

The MQ-9 Reapers and their support systems cost more than $56 million, making them expensive but expendable. Driscoll said the worrisome thing about Tuesday’s incident “is Russian and American aviators interacting with each other at high altitude.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.