Quote Originally Posted by ericmwalters View Post

With regard to UASs, it's been a mixed bag. DRAGON EYE hasn't been as good as we wanted for a battalion-level disposable UAV--mostly because it's not truly disposable. One goes down, we often send out a patrol to recover it. That really bugs me. WASP has been much better for the companies. Sure, we don't have the parts, maintenance tail. But our rationale has been to treat these assets as expendables, like batteries or ammunition.
I had a "disposable" TACMAV UAV (similar to Wasp) go down in Tal Afar. Required to send a patrol out to find it. They couldn't, so I called the sheiks of the area where we thought it went down and offered $50 to anyone who turned it in. My BCT CDR said it saved me a $10k survey, because I didn't have approval to fly it yet.

It showed up at the front gate to my COP an hour later from a kid. I paid the $50 out of pocket. I guess it looked like a toy plane to them. Funny thing was it became a MNC-I SIGACT, since ANY UAV loss was a CCIR at the time, even a small one.