Aviation Week has “some snazzy photos of the Avenger, i.e., General Atomics’ new Predator C, which appears to take the old standard and make it stealthy and more deadly.”
See more pictures here. Update: Stuart Koehl emails:
The main purpose of Predator C was not really enhanced stealth but increased cruise speed, which was achieved by replacing Predator A/B’s Rotax 4-cylinder piston engine with a microturbofan. The fan engine gives Predator C a top speed of around 400 mph, vs 300 mph for the MQ-9 Reaper (Predator B). This comes at the cost of loiter speed and time on station: whereas a piston engine can be throttled back to reduce fuel consumption and extend loiter time, a turbofan operates efficiently only in a rather narrow power band (85-95%), which means the Avenger cannot fly quite as slow as a Reaper, nor hang around quite as long. But it is much better at dashing from one point to another, which can be important when dealing with “time critical” targets (e.g., a very tall, bearded man in a turban seen getting into a car near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border).
