> I feel like they might be taking the wrong lesson from this. The Reaper costs $30-50 million precisely because its mission profile is to deliver 3,500 pounds of payload over 1,000 nautical mile radius.

Partly, but I think there also is a feedback loop. Reapers are expensive, so they must reliably reach their targets. That makes them more expensive (need to be faster, more reliable, less visible on radar, etc), so fewer get ordered, so they must get even more powerful and reliable. That makes them more expensive, etc.

Also, being very expensive, you want them to be able to return home after a mission. That again increases weight, costs.

Result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper says only 575 got built over a period of about 20 years. In comparison, the USA built about 96,000 aircraft in 1944 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aircraft_product...), reaching that total in about two days.