Harrison Kass
Operation Epic Fury has come with extraordinarily heavy UAV losses. The MQ-9 Reaper, once the pride of America’s drone fleet, has been especially affected; at least 24 drones have been shot down in the Middle East since the onset of the conflict. At a price tag of $30 million each, the cost of the lost Reaper drones to the US Air Force is roughly $720 million in total—higher than the cost of the E-3 Sentry destroyed on the ground, the high-end MQ-4C Triton drone lost in early April, or the multiple aircraft destroyed during the rescue of “Dude 44,” the pilot and weapons systems officer of the F-15E Strike Eagle shot down inside Iran.
Perhaps even more important than the fiscal cost of losing the drones is the attrition rate, which exposes the limits of legacy drones operating in hostile airspace—even in an environment in which the United States has largely achieved air superiority.
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