USAF Wants MQ-9 Reaper Successor At A Fraction Of The Cost At $10M Each

- The USAF wants its MQ-9 Reaper successor — the Massed Modular Aircraft — at roughly $10 million a hull, versus $30–50 million for a fully kitted Reaper, and Lt. Gen. Niemi says it'll look like a Reaper: turboprop, same wing, decades-old "truck" tech stripped of gold-plating. Think threadbare hull, hash-manifest economics — proven propulsion, open-architecture mission systems, modular payloads, because Reaper losses over Iran made attrition math ugly. General Atomics snipes that these "unscratched lottery tickets" promise all win, no lose — its counteroffer, the Wildfire drone, awaits the same requirements. Autonomous systems salute poorly, but procurement salutes spreadsheets. Course of action — action. The mic is deadlier than the fleet, and Niemi's already started the speech: victory is near because the cost target is written down.