Another U.S.-Made RQ-20 Puma Crashed In Egypt’s Sinai

On September 11, ISIS news agency, Amaq, shared a photo showing a RQ-20 Puma drone that had recently crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in eastern Egypt.

According to Amaq, the drone crashed near the city of Rafah in the northern part of Sinai. The causes of the crash were not mentioned by the news agency.

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The RQ-20 Puma is a hand-launched unmanned aerial vehicle that was developed by AeroVironment for surveillance and intelligence missions.

In 2018, the Egyptian military purchased an undisclosed number of RQ-20 drones. The version purchased by Egypt is the RQ-20B AE II, which has an operation range of 20 to 60 km with an endurance of up to 2,5 hours. The Egyptian version is also equipped with the Mantis i45 gimbal, lightweight visual sensor.

This was the third RQ-20 Puma drone to crash in Sinai this year. The first drone crashed south of Bir El Abed city last January. The second one crashed in August west of the city. This indicates that the U.S.-made drone has serious reliability issues.

The Egyptian military has been using different types of drone to locate, track and target ISIS cells in Sinai for the past few years.

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