Houthi rebels in Yemen have shot down seven US Reaper drones in less than six weeks, a loss of aircraft worth more than US$200 million (NZ$334m) in what is becoming the most dramatic cost to the Pentagon of the military campaign against the Iran-backed militants.
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360666149/houthi-rebels-shoot-down-7-us-military-reaper-drones-worth-334m-recent-weeks
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I assume you need fairly sophisticated SAM systems to take out these drones. Are they all coming from Iran? Is this a step up in their missile capability?
If you can shoot any aircraft at a given attitude you can shoot this type of drone. It’s not fast, has no stealthy design and its not even small like some other drones.
You would have thought for $33mil a pop they would have some countermeasures. I guess they are still several orders of magnitude cheaper than a jet with an expensive pilot so are more disposable?
They are not that cheap compared to just a jet (F-16@70m, F-35@100m) but pilots cost a lot and not just money.
They also must have a much smaller mission cost due to fuel efficiency. Provided they do not get shot down.
It certainly wasn’t designed to survive against serious opposition and I doubt mere countermeasures would change that. It would probably increase costs more and would be useless in most missions.