Costing $30 million apiece, the US has reportedly lost a dozen in the Gulf and one of these apparently to friendly fire. Beside which, its remote pilots are throwing sickies due the mental strain involved in watching individuals go about their daily business before literally raining Hellfire down on them.
Apparently not fighting fair is bad for your wellbeing as well as theirs, and so trends are toward drones that (a) are cheaper (b) can be swarmed and (c) use AI instead of remote pilots.
The Reaper was developed as a replacement for the Predator, originally developed by someone known as the father of UAV (or drone) technology. And he began it with colleagues ~ in the style of Jobs and Wozniak ~ in a garage in California. Specifically Abraham Karen teamed up with a fellow engineer and a pre-med student that he met at an aero-modelling meet.
Bankrupted, they were bought out (and taken on) by General Atomics ~ the world never really having been the same since. The reason the contractor took them on was because they'd been struggling with developing a UAV themselves... the advantage of working in a garage ever being the focus imminent penury provides.
