AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 289 / 289

Plate 289 of 289 · Modern age · Remotely piloted reconnaissance and strike aircraft

General Atomics Protector RG1

Protector RG1 (MQ-9B SkyGuardian), PR009, painted as PR009, a General Atomics Protector RG1 of No. 31 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, the first Protector delivered to the United Kingdom, in October 2023: the RAF’s MQ-9B SkyGuardian, a remotely piloted reconnaissance and strike aircraft built to be certified to fly in civil airspace, flown by a pilot and a sensor operator on the ground, with a 24-metre wing ending in upturned winglets, a bulbous nose housing the satellite-communications dish, an electro-optical sensor ball under the nose, a V-tail with a ventral fin beneath it, a Honeywell turboprop driving a four-bladed pusher propeller at the tail and retractable tricycle undercarriage, shown standing level on its wheels without weapons: medium grey overall with black ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ and No. 31 Squadron’s green and yellow chequers on the forward fuselage, a low-visibility roundel and black ‘PR009’ aft of the wing, a red and pale blue flash on each tail surface, ‘SM’ and the squadron badge on the ventral fin, a low-visibility roundel under the starboard wing and a bright spinner with yellow-tipped blades, as photographed at its arrival in October 2023, on its first flight in UK airspace in November 2023 and on the Waddington runway in 2025 (no three-view of the MQ-9B is published, so the shape was taken from a side-on photograph of PR009 scaled to the published length and from a manufacturer’s overhead photograph of the MQ-9B demonstrator scaled to the published span; the markings on the starboard side of the rear fuselage and ventral fin mirror the port side, which the photographs show; no photograph shows the upper wing, so it carries no roundels; the badge is simplified and the small stencils are left off).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as PR009, a General Atomics Protector RG1 of No. 31 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, the first Protector delivered to the United Kingdom, in October 2023: the RAF’s MQ-9B SkyGuardian, a remotely piloted reconnaissance and strike aircraft built to be certified to fly in civil airspace, flown by a pilot and a sensor operator on the ground, with a 24-metre wing ending in upturned winglets, a bulbous nose housing the satellite-communications dish, an electro-optical sensor ball under the nose, a V-tail with a ventral fin beneath it, a Honeywell turboprop driving a four-bladed pusher propeller at the tail and retractable tricycle undercarriage, shown standing level on its wheels without weapons: medium grey overall with black ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ and No. 31 Squadron’s green and yellow chequers on the forward fuselage, a low-visibility roundel and black ‘PR009’ aft of the wing, a red and pale blue flash on each tail surface, ‘SM’ and the squadron badge on the ventral fin, a low-visibility roundel under the starboard wing and a bright spinner with yellow-tipped blades, as photographed at its arrival in October 2023, on its first flight in UK airspace in November 2023 and on the Waddington runway in 2025 (no three-view of the MQ-9B is published, so the shape was taken from a side-on photograph of PR009 scaled to the published length and from a manufacturer’s overhead photograph of the MQ-9B demonstrator scaled to the published span; the markings on the starboard side of the rear fuselage and ventral fin mirror the port side, which the photographs show; no photograph shows the upper wing, so it carries no roundels; the badge is simplified and the small stencils are left off). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (735 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Protector RG1 (MQ-9B SkyGuardian)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Protector RG1 (MQ-9B SkyGuardian), PR009 modelled here.

History

The Protector RG1

The RAF began flying the General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper in 2007, first over Afghanistan and later over Iraq and Syria, its crews working from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. The Reaper was built for war zones, where military air traffic control kept other aircraft out of its way, and could not be flown in ordinary British airspace. In 2015 the government announced that a new aircraft would replace it, and named it Protector.

The aircraft chosen was General Atomics’ MQ-9B SkyGuardian, a Reaper redesigned at the company’s own expense to be certified like a crewed aircraft, to the NATO airworthiness standard for large remotely piloted aircraft. It has a strengthened airframe, protection against lightning and bird strikes, a radar to detect and avoid other traffic, and a longer wing of 24 metres with winglets, which lets it stay airborne for well over a day. To show what it could do, the company flew its own MQ-9B across the Atlantic in July 2018, to appear at the Royal International Air Tattoo in the year of the RAF’s centenary.

Britain ordered 16 Protectors, the first under a 2020 contract, and they carry the RAF designation Protector RG1. No. 31 Squadron was re-formed at Waddington in October 2023 to fly them, a week after the first aircraft, PR009, arrived there, and a Protector made the type’s first flight in British airspace that November. The RAF announced in June 2025 that Protector had entered service. Its crews fly it by satellite link from ground stations at Waddington, a pilot and a sensor operator side by side, and it can carry Brimstone missiles and Paveway IV bombs under its wings as well as its cameras and radar.

This airframe

Protector RG1 PR009

PR009The airframe modelled

PR009 was the first Protector RG1 to arrive in the United Kingdom, in October 2023, and flies with No. 31 Squadron from RAF Waddington. No Protector is in a museum, so the model shows a serving aircraft, and PR009 was chosen because it is the RAF Protector best photographed: at its arrival ceremony at Waddington, on its first flight in UK airspace in November 2023, and side-on on the Waddington runway in 2025. The model shows it as those photographs do: medium grey overall, with ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ in black and No. 31 Squadron’s green and yellow chequers on the forward fuselage, a low-visibility roundel and ‘PR009’ aft of the wing, a red and pale blue flash on each tail surface, ‘SM’ and the squadron badge on the ventral fin, one low-visibility roundel under the starboard wing, and a bright spinner with yellow-tipped propeller blades. No three-view drawing of the MQ-9B is published, so its side profile is taken from the side-on photograph of PR009 scaled to the published length, and its plan from a manufacturer’s overhead photograph of the MQ-9B demonstrator scaled to the published span. The markings on the starboard side of the rear fuselage and ventral fin, which no photograph shows, mirror the port side; no photograph shows the upper wing, so it carries no roundels. The badge is simplified and the small stencils are left off.

Where to see one

Not on charge

The RAF’s Protectors are flown by No. 31 Squadron from RAF Waddington and none is in a museum.

All 289 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.