The Hunter, known as RQ-5 when unarmed and MQ-5B when equipped with small Viper Strike guided bombs, could fly for over 12 hours at over 15,000 feet. It’s short range made it a good fit for the army, who could send one on a scouting mission 80 miles away. The Hunter could also relay controls to a second Hunter flying further ahead, giving it an effective range of 160 miles. It could fly for between 12 and 18 hours at a time. With a puller propeller in the front and a pusher propeller in the front, the drone was a simple, rugged workhouse scout. When Russian forces captured Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, they even claimed it was a Hunter that they shot down (The Pentagon denied this claim). Replacing the Hunter will be the Gray Eagle, a Predator-derived drone that the Army first used in Iraq in 2010. The larger drone can fly for up to 24 hours, at altitudes of 29,000 feet and with a top speed of 190 mph. Instead of guided bombs it carries four Hellfire missiles. Operating a squadron of between 9 and 12 of the Gray Eagles takes 128 people. The drone has a range of almost 250 miles, which lets it cover far more sky than even linked-up Hunters. The Army’s retirement of the Hunter means that it is moving on to different drones, but that doesn’t mean Hunters are done with the War on Terror. As UPI notes: “The Army is transferring MQ-5 Hunters at Fort Hood to government-owned, contractor-operated units supporting U.S. operations overseas.” That means the Hunter will still be spotted in the skies above conflict zones around the world for years to come.
