Ecuador says two US Reapers are already flying from Taura

Ecuador's defence minister, Gian Carlo Loffredo, said on Friday that two MQ-9 Reaper drones turned over for cooperation with the United States are already flying in Ecuadorian airspace. The aircraft arrived in the last week of September at Guayaquil aboard a US C-5M Super Galaxy and are based at Taura air base in Guayas province, a runway of more than 3,040 metres near the port and the gulf.

US officials told The New York Times on Tuesday that a number of MQ-9s have been moved from Africa to Colombia and Ecuador. They described the batch as small. They would not say how many aircraft had reached each country, or how many were still in transit. The transfer is a shift of scarce airframes, not a new purchase programme.

The Reaper is the aircraft used in the 2020 strike that killed Qassem Soleimani. A single airframe can cost up to $50 million. The fleet is short. US officials said at least 45 Reapers, about a quarter of the inventory, have been destroyed in the Iran war. Moving any of the survivors to the Andes is a choice against other theatres.

Colombia said over the summer that it had agreed to receive three MQ-9s and would look at buying one more. Ecuador's public account is the more precise of the two: two aircraft, already operating, Taura as the base, intelligence and surveillance against trafficking corridors by air, sea and land. The US side will fly the missions. Data is to go to both Ecuadorian and US command centres.

Washington has designated trafficking groups in both countries as terrorist organisations. Colombia and Ecuador are among a small set of governments that have agreed to joint operations inside their borders. Taura has been prepared by US personnel for that work. The base sits on corridors that run from Pacific ports into the gulf and inland.

What the aircraft can do on station is persistent watch: identify a boat, an aircraft or a vehicle and pass the track. What they have done elsewhere is strike. The Times noted the Soleimani precedent because the same type is now in a region where the stated mission is cartel surveillance. Neither Quito nor Bogota has published rules of engagement for a weapon release. Loffredo's radio remarks described cooperation and flights, not a strike authority.

The count that can be checked today is small and uneven. Ecuador: two, delivered, flying from Taura. Colombia: an agreement for three, plus a possible purchase, with no public arrival list. US officials: a small number moved from Africa, after 45 losses in the Iran war. The gap between those three statements is the story. A deployment that began as a summer agreement is now, in Ecuador at least, an aircraft on a runway.

Taura is not a temporary strip. The main runway runs past 3,040 metres, long enough for the C-5M that delivered the aircraft and for the Reaper's own launch and recovery. The base is close to Guayaquil's port terminals and to gulf routes that Ecuadorian officers have described as trafficking corridors. Placing the two aircraft there puts the sensor on the geography the mission names, rather than on a capital-city airfield.

The Africa withdrawal is the other half of the logistics. Officials told the Times the Reapers were shifted from African missions. They did not name the squadrons or the bases left thinner. After 45 losses in the Iran war, any shift is a cut somewhere else. Quito's public gain of two flying aircraft is, on the US account, a debit against a fleet that is already a quarter smaller than it was before those losses.

Colombia's summer agreement for three aircraft, and a possible purchase of one more, has not been matched by an arrival statement of the kind Loffredo gave. Until Bogota publishes a tail count, the only confirmed Reapers on the ground in the two countries are the two at Taura. That is the number a reader can check this week.