Iran has destroyed $1bn worth of MQ-9 Reaper Drones, or roughly 20 percent of the US’s pre-war inventory of the sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a report by Bloomberg on Friday.
The report said that many of the drones were downed by Iran in flight, but that others had been destroyed on the ground when Iran targeted US military bases in the Gulf.
The MQ-9 is both a surveillance drone and capable of carrying a payload, typically Hellfire missiles or Joint Direct Attack Munition guided bombs.
Bloomberg reported that the US may have lost up to 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones in the war, a higher number than the 24 that a report released this month by the Congressional Research Service noted.
The $1bn price tag adds to the cost of the war on Iran, which a senior official at the Pentagon told Reuters in May reached up to $29bn. The MQ-9 Reaper drone is being gradually phased out by the US military, although General Atomics continues to produce it for foreign customers.
Iran’s ability to shoot down MQ-9 Reaper Drones is another demonstration of how it has managed to deploy some air defense, despite claims from US President Donald Trump that the country’s defences have been “obliterated”.
A US official told The New York Times this week that Iranian military commanders may have mapped out flight patterns of US fighter jets and bombers over their skies, raising the risks should Trump decide to restart the war on Iran.
Days before the US and Iran reached a fragile ceasefire in April, Iran shot down a F-15E Strike Eagle warplane, sparking a massive US recovery operation for the pilots. If Iran had been able to capture the US pilot alive, it would have put tremendous pressure on Washington, experts say.
The New York Times reported that Russia may have helped Iran map US flight patterns in order to better position their military assets and air defense systems.
Iran and Russia have a long-standing security arrangement. Russia has assisted Iran by providing satellite imagery of US warships and military personnel, according to multiple US media reports.
Various regional media had featured reports of downed Reaper drones through March into April, at the height of the air war over Iran:
🇾🇪 Iranian and regional media outlets, including Iran’s Fars News Agency, are reporting the downing of a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone over Yemen’s Marib province, the key oil and gas region located in north-central Yemen today.
The claim and the footage has not yet been confirmed by… pic.twitter.com/In3GVmuLJG
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 17, 2026
Iran’s air defence comprises a mix of domestically produced systems along with Russian and Chinese systems.
Middle East Eye was the first to report that China had provided air defence batteries to Iran, following the June 2025 war that culminated in the US bombing three Iranian nuclear sites.