[OneWingedShark]

>And i must stress cheap. You have to be willing to risk them to enemy fire and you wont risk a billion dollar robot. A five or ten million dollar robot with a couple of JDAMs and a 20mm cannon you will risk and the SAM he uses to shoot it down costs as much as the drone itself.

You’re probably off by several orders of magnitude.
A simple drone for army use could probably be produced (not developed) for $20k/unit.

The big problem that we have is shifting requirements and its related cousin “feature creep”. We had the capability to produce UAVs in the 70’s, cost effectively, it was the political end of things (resulting in feature creep and shifting requirements) that kept things expensive.

[GonzoGOP]

You’re probably off by several orders of magnitude. A simple drone for army use could probably be produced (not developed) for $20k/unit.

I'll stick with my numbers. The JDAM itself costs $35,000 to $70,000 just for the tail kit. A UCAV, not just a model aircraft with a camera, but something that can actually drop bombs and strafe tanks, is going to cost a lot more than a bomb. A BGM-109 Tomahawk costs 1.4 million, although congress wants to cut it to half that with the next order. And it only has to fly one way.

Does the government over price things, Yes. Does the military feature creep projects till they cost 10 times what they should, Hell Yes. Can they build a UCAV that can bomb, strafe, and fly COIN missions for under a million a pop, not much of a chance.