"Chad Irby" wrote
"Paul F Austin" wrote:

"Chad Irby" wrote

The "little bitty" UAVs out there are in the "fly past really quick
and
turbulence does the job" category...

There really aren't "a lot" of large UAVs. They (and their payloads) are
quite expensive and the number look limited for the foreseeable future.

Funny, I keep finding quite large ones. Like the Predator, the
Darkstar, the Global Hawk, or one of several Russian designs that are
basically reworked large cruise missiles or former target drones.

You keep finding_types_of large ones. Take a look at the number of G-Hawks
produced and planned. The payloads (never mind the airframe) are so
expensive that the Air Force treats it as a "high demand-low availability"
resource like Rivet Joint or JSTARS. For cost reasons, it's unlikely to
change. The same seems to be true of Predator. The UAVs that look to be
procured in large numbers are the Pioneer-class machines.