Destroyers are a variety of Reaper that appear in Mass Effect 3. They are smaller than capital ships, but are still among the sentient Reaper variants and are capable of incredible destruction. While not as large as capital ships, Destroyers are still larger than many Alliance or Council ships and are strong enough to shrug off attacks from a small fleet. Destroyers are capable of greater mobility on planetary surfaces than capital ships, due to their smaller size. They walk on four legs and can decimate enemy ground forces with little effort. They are armed with mass accelerator kinetic cannons and a devastating particle beam weapon that can sweep across surrounding terrain and vaporize advancing troops, or blast incoming aircraft out of the sky.
Despite their awesome power, Destroyers are not invincible. Throughout the course of Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard and his crew manage to kill four Destroyers. The first Destroyer they defeat on the Krogan homeworld of Tuchanka by summoning a gigantic Thresher Maw, which tackles the Destroyer and drags it down beneath the desert, burying it. A second Destroyer is killed on the Quarian homeworld of Rannoch, which Shepard tags with a satellite targeting device, allowing the Quarian flotilla in orbit to bombard the Reaper with full firepower. The Reaper is mortally damaged and speaks to Shepard before it finally shuts down, telling him that his efforts to break the Reapers' cycle of genocide are doomed to failure. During the Battle of London, Shepard blows up a Destroyer mounting a Hades Cannon using a Cain "Nuke Launcher", and destroys another using two Thanix missile batteries.