Sam Hamad
The New Arab / August 15, 2026
US Reaper losses in the Iran war expose the cost of high-end drones as Washington expands cheaper, expendable unmanned systems at scale.
The US military has lost around a quarter of its MQ-9 Reaper drone fleet during the war on Iran, a striking rate of attrition that comes as Washington increasingly turns towards cheaper, expendable drones designed to be deployed and lost at scale.
At least 45 Reapers have been lost since the conflict began, according to The Washington Post, out of a pre-war US fleet of around 185 aircraft.
But defence analyst Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, told The New Arab that the scale of the losses should not necessarily be seen as evidence that the Reapers had failed.
“It is a notable portion of the active MQ-9 fleet. But there was a decision that it was worth putting the Reapers at risk to assist with targeting of mobile Iranian drone and missile forces,” she said.
“They can loiter overhead for more than 24 hours keeping watch over an area and if they are shot down, no one dies.”
The MQ-9, which can conduct long-duration surveillance as well as strikes, costs tens of millions of dollars depending on its configuration. Its losses during the Iran war could therefore represent well over $1 billion worth of aircraft.
Pettyjohn said the US Air Force had already been seeking for years to reduce its reliance on the Reaper as it shifted away from counter-terrorism operations towards preparing for conflicts with major military powers.
“They still are expensive platforms, but given that they were able to help US forces execute important missions without the loss of life I would consider their losses, which were for a good reason, acceptable,” she said.
Even if the losses were judged operationally acceptable, however, the destruction of around a quarter of the fleet in less than six months represents a major depletion of a costly US surveillance and strike capability, raising questions over how readily Washington could absorb or replace losses on that scale in a prolonged conflict.
The Reaper was developed and heavily used during US counter-terrorism campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, where Washington largely enjoyed air superiority and faced little threat to the aircraft themselves.
The war on Iran has instead pushed the platform into a far more contested environment, exposing vulnerabilities that have long been understood, which raises questions about the Trump administration’s use of them.
Pettyjohn said the vulnerability of large unmanned aircraft such as the MQ-9 to modern air defences has long been recognised.
“I don’t think anyone ever thought that the Reapers would be survivable against modern air defenses,” she said, pointing to Ukraine’s early success with Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones before Russian air defences began operating more effectively.
“The US found a valuable role for MQ-9s against Iran but it entailed considerable risk. But in high-intensity modern wars there are going to be losses. Better they be uncrewed platforms.”
The scale of those losses nevertheless underlines the cost of using high-end reusable drones in an environment where even unmanned aircraft can be destroyed in significant numbers.
The attrition comes as the US simultaneously expands its use of much cheaper unmanned weapons.
US Central Command announced this week the creation of Task Force Falcon Strike, its first multinational, multi-domain attack-drone force, which will operate one-way attack systems in the air, on the surface of the sea and underwater alongside regional partners.
The move builds on a broader Pentagon effort to field large numbers of inexpensive drones, reflecting lessons drawn from Ukraine, Russia and Iran.
Both Russia and Ukraine have deployed cheap first-person-view and one-way attack drones in significant numbers, while Iran has spent years developing relatively inexpensive systems such as the Shahed family that can be launched in massed attacks.
Those conflicts have demonstrated how lower-cost systems can impose significant military and financial pressure on forces relying on more expensive aircraft, missiles and air-defence interceptors, while also making battlefield losses routine rather than exceptional.
The experience has helped push militaries towards what is often described as “affordable mass”: accepting that individual systems may be lost while possessing enough of them to sustain operations.
Pettyjohn said the Iran conflict had reinforced lessons already emerging from Ukraine “about affordable mass and the grim realities of modern warfare where there are many losses”.
But she cautioned against treating cheap one-way attack drones as straightforward replacements for aircraft such as the Reaper.
“I think that they are complements. Cheap one-way attack drones are more like munitions. MQ-9s are intended to be used many times and fly many different munitions. That makes them in a different class of drone,” she said.
Cheaper attack drones can also provide militaries with greater “magazine depth”, allowing more weapons to be launched without rapidly exhausting stocks of expensive long-range missiles.
Yet their lower individual price does not always mean an attack will ultimately be cheaper.
“Cheap one-way attack drones provide additional magazine depth at much lower cost, but they do not offer the same capability as sophisticated missiles,” Pettyjohn said.
“And you need many more of them to achieve the same effect, which means that their per salvo cost may be more expensive than high-end weapons.”
Sam Hamad is a historian and freelance writer and editor
