An MQ-9 Reaper spy plane sits in a hangar at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs. The new remotely piloted planes will carry Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs. Photo by Gary Thompson.

INDIAN SPRINGS -- Commanders at Creech Air Force Base launched a new era of aviation history Thursday, activating an attack squadron for the remotely piloted MQ-9 Reaper spy plane, a big brother of the MQ-1 Predator that can fly faster and higher and drop laser-guided bombs as well as fire missiles.

"The Reaper is like a Predator on steroids," Lt. Col. Jonathan Greene, commander of the 42nd Attack Squadron, said after the activation ceremony in a hangar where a Reaper with his name on it was parked, north of the base's main Predator complex.

The name Reaper, Greene said, "was thought up by airmen in the field. ... They thought it typified the actual mission that it does. It's always present, always lurking there, watching, waiting and ready to engage if necessary."

The squadron's sole Reaper on site, a 2002 production model, bears tail No. 003. The $10 million aircraft arrived Wednesday at Creech, 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas, flying in from a private test airfield, Gray Butte, south of Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

The squadron eventually will have "10 or 20" Reapers, Greene said, with the first half-dozen being delivered over the course of a year from manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in San Diego.

"By this time next year, we will make our enemies truly understand what it means to fear the Reaper," Greene said at the end of his remarks during the activation ceremony.

Some Reapers will be used for training, but others will be deployed for operations in the global war on terrorism, focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Predator has been a workhorse in high demand by battlefield commanders.

Like the Predator, the Reaper can be controlled via satellite link thousands of miles away from operational areas in Southwest Asia through what are known as "remote-split" operations. The planes are launched in theater but can be controlled by a pilot and sensor operator sitting at computer consoles in a ground station, or they can be "handed off" via satellite signals to pilots and sensor operators in Nevada or elsewhere.

The Reaper can carry a set of Hellfire missiles and four 500-pound bombs, dubbed GBU-12s, for guided bomb units like those carried by manned U.S. warplanes.

In the future, Greene said, Reapers might be equipped with other so-called "smart weapons" such as Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs, and small diameter bombs.

He lauded the Reaper's prospects for augmenting the fleets of Predators and other remotely piloted aircraft overseas.

"We are poised to make history with an aircraft that is on the cutting edge of modern air and space power," Greene, a 41-year-old F-16 and Predator pilot, told a throng of airmen, family members and leaders from Nellis Air Force Base who had gathered at the hangar.

"It is up to us to forge a path that will guarantee we will put MQ-9 to its full potential in our war against terrorists and perverted militants that threaten our way of life," he said.

Col. Eric Mathewson, commander of the 57th Operations Group at Creech, which is part of Nellis' 57th Wing, said the reactivation of the 42nd Attack Squadron, from its roots as a 1917 biplane training unit in Texas and later a bomber squadron in World War II at Pearl Harbor, "is incredible."

"We are at the advent of a new era in aviation history," he said while airmen wearing patches depicting the black panther emblem of the 42nd Attack Squadron listened.

"Now we're taking another step, a big step," Mathewson said. "We now have an aircraft system which has the capability, the potential, to realize tactics, and techniques, procedures that we never envisioned before."

Greene said a 900-horsepower turboprop engine pushes the Reaper to speeds up to 250 mph. It can reach an altitude of 50,000 feet, or 30,000 feet with weapons, and loiter there for about 24 hours, watching for potential targets with its high-tech infrared and near-real-time video cameras.

Unlike the Predator, which has an inverted tail, the Reaper's tail is flared upright to give it more stability for hauling 3,000 pounds of external weapons.

Chris Seat, director of Air Force Predator programs for General Atomics, said the Reaper, when fully fueled, weighs about 10,000 pounds, or "three or four times" what a Predator weighs.

The Air Force has nine Reapers that it flies, the Department of Homeland Security has one being used for border patrol in Arizona, and the Navy is buying two, Seat said.

"There are other ones out there, but the Air Force owns nine of them right now. And they have us on contract through 19 aircraft," he said.

The Air Force's eight other Reapers are at General Atomics' Gray Butte facility. "They're getting them ready to go. Colonel Mathewson talked about getting them deployed into combat next summer," Seat said.

He said some of those will be used at Creech for training and the others will be shipped overseas.

General Atomics so far has built 149 MQ-1s. The Air Force has contracted the company to deliver 178 MQ-1 Predators in all, Seat said.