RobotRisk / General Atomics Aeronautical Systems / 2025-08-31

defense space · crash

MQ-9 Reaper lost in Middle East due to chafed wire

S4 · 08/31
2025 · General Atomics Aeronautical Systems

Record

Company	General Atomics Aeronautical Systems
Category	defense space
Type	crash
Date	08/31 2025
Time of day	not documented
Location	no physical site (recall / fleet-wide / aggregate record)
Severity	S4 (serious injury, total loss, or grounding)
Scale	1 aircraft
Confidence	medium
Verification	Yes - adversarially checked against the cited source
Source	Air & Space Forces Magazine

What happened

Air & Space Forces Magazine reported an MQ-9 Reaper was lost in the Middle East due to a chafed wire, per a new investigation report.

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Comparable crash events in defense space

Sev	Date	Company	Event
S4	2026-08-04	Kratos Defense & Security Solutions	XQ-58 Valkyrie crashes at Dugway Proving Ground, flights paused
S4	2026-07-26	Baykar	Bayraktar Akıncı shot down over Yemen (first confirmed combat loss)
S4	2025-06	Turkish Aerospace Industries	TAI Anka-3 UCAV prototype lost in hard-landing crash near Konya
S4	2025-01	Baykar	Bayraktar Akıncı drone crashes in Libya
S4	2024-12-12	AVIC (Aviation Industry Corporation of China)	Yilong-2H drone crashes into Olympic Sports Center in Jingzhou, China
S3	2019-12	Safran	Safran works to correct Patroller UAV after December crash

Other General Atomics Aeronautical Systems entries

08/13
2026 - US lost roughly 25% of MQ-9 Reaper drone fleet during Iran war

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