Can't a drone carry those sensors and radar and still be an order of magnitude cheaper than a fighter jet?
Sensors and radars take more space, power and weight. So the drone will need to be bigger and more expensive and before you know, you will probably end up with something that looks and costs just like a normal jet fighter.
The F-35 is $200M. The Global Hawk drone is about $50M already and that's without any weapons systems.
Re:Pierre Sprey on the F-35 [video]
by FireBeyond on Wednesday June 18, 2014 @11:20PM
(#7914227)
50M? As of last year, 131M
So yes, you do need both the plane (with onboard sensor/radar) and missiles in order to hope for a kill.