By Marcus Weisgerber and Michael R. Gordon

When President Trump ordered the U.S. military to strike Tehran's nuclear sites in June, a formation of B-2 stealth bombers escorted by jet fighters ventured deep into Iran to strike their targets with massive bunker-busting bombs.

But when Trump ordered widespread strikes on Iran's military sites two weeks ago, the first aircraft to lumber across the border were slow-moving MQ-9 Reaper drones. They have been used in the battle against the Iranians ever since, attacking hundreds of targets.

Iran's Shahed attack drones have been in the spotlight as they attacked American forces, as well as military and civilian infrastructure, across the Middle East. But the U.S. has been waging its own drone war, striking at Iranian missiles, drones and other targets and providing vital battlefield reconnaissance.

The U.S. military has done little to highlight the role of the MQ-9s. But the telltale indications of their operations in the skies are evident in many of the videos of American airstrikes that Central Command, responsible for U.S. forces in the Middle East, has posted on social media, which officials say were taken by Reapers.

Flown remotely by pilots in the U.S., the MQ-9s have chalked up an important and previously undisclosed combat first. Equipped with 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs, which are munitions with foldable wings, the drones can reach targets that are well beyond the range of the Hellfire missiles the drones have long carried.

Their flights deep over Iran haven't been cost-free. About a dozen MQ-9s had been lost in the air or on the ground when attacked by Iranian missiles as of late last week, military officials said. One was mistakenly shot down by a Gulf nation.

That hasn't deterred the U.S., which has been flying more than 10 MQ-9 orbits over Iran at a time as the American commanders push to stop Tehran's ballistic-missile launches and whittle down other offensive capabilities.

A spokesman for Central Command declined to comment on the details of the Reaper's operations.

"It's now undeniable that drones have a place in a contested air environment," said Caitlin Lee, a drone expert who is director of acquisition and technology policy at Rand, referencing airspace where planes are vulnerable to getting shot down. Lee said "it makes perfect sense" to use the MQ-9 for "for persistence and targeting."

And yet, the little heralded role of the MQ-9 may be the last hurrah for the Reaper, which became famous for the millions of hours it spent flying over the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan searching for insurgents and roadside bomb makers.

As the U.S. military shifted its focus to countering China's growing military might, and away from the Pentagon's war on terror, support for buying more MQ-9s began to weaken.

The Air Force placed its final order for Reapers in 2020 and manufacturer General Atomics closed the production line last year after building 575 of the drones. The final aircraft cost about $16 million each when purchased in a batch of four, according to C. Mark Brinkley, a General Atomics spokesman.

Critics say the non-stealthy, slow-flying drones, which were first used by the U.S. military in 2007, are far too vulnerable to China's air defenses and that of other well-equipped adversaries. "As we look to the high-end fight, we just can't take them into the battlefield," Will Roper, then a senior Air Force official said in 2020 when the Air Force proposed ending production of the MQ-9. "They are easily shot down."

The Reaper has some important strengths, however. The drones have high-power cameras and other sensors that aren't on all human-piloted combat aircraft. They can loiter over the battlefield as long as 20 hours on a single tank of fuel, allowing them to wait for mobile missile launchers to emerge from hiding and then strike them. Moreover, the Reaper's small turboprop engine is much quieter than a jet fighter.

Their munitions load can also be adjusted so they strike targets with a lower risk of "collateral damage," the military's name for the unintended harm to civilians. Satellite feeds from drones enable commanders in the rear to have a real-time understanding of what is happening on the battlefield.

"It ties all the pieces together, intelligence, moving targets, precise coordinates, and updates those weapons so they can actually hit what they need to hit in real time," said Houston Cantwell, a retired Air Force brigadier general who commanded an MQ-9 wing.

Sending Reapers and not piloted aircraft on the missions avoids American casualties.

But the MQ-9s have their drawbacks, too. They are slow and can have hourslong flight times to key locations. Their field of view can also be narrow, providing a detailed picture of the specific target the drone is focusing on but with little visibility of forces that could be just a short distance away.

The MQ-9's utility and vulnerabilities were both on display last year when President Trump launched his air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. Central Command, which put a premium on trying to kill senior Houthis leaders, used the Reapers to search for and strike targets.

But the Houthis extracted a price. They used an Iranian-provided surface-to-air missile that can loiter in the sky before homing in on heat from the drones. At least half a dozen MQ-9s were downed during the 53-day war with the Houthis between March and May last year. That same surface-to-air system has proved to be a threat to the MQ-9s in their operations over Iran, military officials said.

Because the Reapers carry sophisticated technology, U.S. operators sometimes crash damaged Reapers into the ground or bomb them so that their sensors will be destroyed, military officials said.

In recent years, the Air Force has looked for new ways to use the Reaper in combat, sending it to large-scale combat exercises, including Valiant Shield in the Pacific and Red Flag in Alaska. There, officials learned new ways to use them in concert with the other branches of the military.

"Valiant Shield and Red Flag proved the MQ-9's ability for life beyond counterterrorism," said Cantwell.

With proper upgrades, such as defenses against enemy missiles, the Reaper could remain viable in more dangerous combat scenarios. "Some relatively minor mods to MQ-9s for self-protection would make them even more effective in this threat environment," Lee said.

Yet Pentagon leaders have pushed to retire it, arguing the MQ-9s are too vulnerable and the money saved could be put toward newer generation aircraft.

Officials had made a similar case over the past decade for retiring the A-10 Warthog, a 1970s-era attack jet that provided air cover for troops on the ground but which has been deployed in the Middle East against Islamic State and has also been trained to carry out missions over waterways in the region. Centcom on Sunday touted the Warthog's role in the campaign against Iran.

Write to Marcus Weisgerber at marcus.weisgerber@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 16, 2026 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)

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