Iran Press/ West Asia: U.S. military's Central Command(CENTCOM) confirmed reports of the aircraft being downed in a desert region of Yemen's central Marib province.
According to AP, Images show that a MQ-9 drone laid down on its belly and its tail assembly disconnected from their rest of its body. At least one hatch on the drone appeared to have been opened after it landed there, though the drone remained broadly intact without any clear blast damage.
Located 120 kilometers east of Sanaa, Marib sits on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula’s Empty Quarter Desert at the foot of the Sarawat Mountains running along the Red Sea.
Since Yemen’s civil war started in 2014, when the Houthis seized most of the country’s north and its capital of Sanaa, the U.S. military has lost at least five drones to the Houthis.
This month alone, there's been two others suspected shootdowns of Reapers that the American military hasn't confirmed.
"Defense News Aerospace" suggests that intact wreckage of the MQ-9 drone show that possibly it made a hard landing, possibly due to being hijacked or having its GPS coordinates spoofed to force it to land by Houthi Ansarallah Air Defense.
MQ-9 Reaper is a reconnaissance and strike UAV of US Air Force.
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