Chris Pocock has been covering the defense beat for AIN for over 30&nbsp;years. He is a British citizen and a graduate of the University of Cambridge. Chris worked in the air cargo business for ten years before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. He subsequently edited two air cargo journals before becoming AIN’s Defense Editor. He retired from that position in 2018, but still contributes to the publication. Chris has written extensively on aerial reconnaissance, including four books on the history of the U-2 spyplane. He also lectures on this and other topics related to intelligence-gathering in the Cold War.

Defense Correspondent

Chris Pocock

A NATO Members User Group for the GA-ASI MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is being established. According to Frank Pace, president of GA-ASI, it will provide a forum for new European Reaper operators to understand U.S. tactics, techniques and procedures, and to arrange mutually beneficial support solutions. The UK and France already operate Reapers, and the Netherlands will buy four, according to Pace. Germany remains a potential customer, he added, although it might wait for the certifiable Predator B. This version of the Reaper is on schedule to fly in late 2016, Pace added.


“Their buys are not big numbers, so it makes sense for the Europeans to achieve some commonality,” Pace told AIN. GA-ASI is recommending that a depot for the Reaper’s TPE331 turboprop engines be set up in Germany, where maker Honeywell already operates an overhaul facility. For training, GA-ASI is recommending Italy, where there are less airspace restrictions in force for UAV operations. The Italian air force was GA-ASI’s first customer in Europe. It has acquired MQ-1 Predators, but not larger Reapers.


During NATO exercise Unified Vision last May, GA-ASI demonstrated the integration of sensor data from the Reaper with NATO ISR networks. A manned Beechcraft King Air 350 was used as the UAV surrogate, carrying a GA-ASI Lynx multimode radar, a FLIR Star Safire 3800HD EO/IR sensor, Link 16, and the L-3Com tactical common datalink. GA-ASI said that its payload management software named Claw provided coordinated command and control of the payloads. The company’s System for Tactical Archival, Retrieval and Exploitation (STARE) software shared and rebroadcast the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data across multiple levels of security to the NATO partners, it added.

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