Search Continues for Crashed Reaper in Lake Ontario

The New York Air National Guard’s 174th Attack Wing in Syracuse on Wednesday asked the Air Force for air support in locating one of the wing’s MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft that crashed on Tuesday in Lake Ontario during a training mission. The wing made the request for any available aircraft, including helicopters, reported Syracuse’s The Post-Standard, citing a wing official. New York National Guard spokesman Eric Durr told the Daily Report there were no Air Force aircraft performing the search yet, as of mid-day on Nov. 13. A Coast Guard helicopter had searched for the downed Reaper on Tuesday, but had to call off the search due to bad weather, according to the newspaper. The unarmed Reaper went down inside the confines of military special-use airspace in the eastern end of Lake Ontario, about 20 miles northeast of Oswego, N.Y., during a training sortie supporting the wing’s MQ-9 schoolhouse, Col. Greg Semmel, the wing’s commander, told reporters during a Nov. 12 briefing. The wing, located at Hancock Field, launches Reapers from Fort Drum’s Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield in Watertown, which is north of Syracuse and east of the lake.