The 27-foot-long Predator is the star among battlefield UAVs for the U.S. armed forces. Dozens of the aircraft are pulling duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan, with a main mission of providing intelligence gathering, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Increasingly, too, they're being used as a weapons platform. The Air Force's daily "airpower summary" note regularly features reports like this one from April 27: "In Afghanistan, an Air Force MQ-1B Predator fired a Hellfire missile onto an enemy combatant near Bagram. An on-scene joint terminal attack controller declared the mission successful."
With two days left in April, U.S. forces have logged a record number of airstrikes by Predators in a single month: 11, or nearly twice as many as the previous monthly high, according to a story in Tuesday's USA Today. The Predator pictured here has just returned to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, following a mission.
Caption by Jonathan Skillings
