The Washington Post reports that over 400 U.S. unmanned military drones have crashed across the globe since 2001.
Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons, according to more than 50,000 pages of accident investigation reports and other records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.That figure is almost equivalent to the number of major crashes incurred by the Air Force’s fleet of fighter jets and attack planes during the same period, even though the drones flew far fewer missions and hours, according to Air Force safety statistics.
While most of the drones that have crashed happened in combat zones, however dozens more have been destroyed over or on United States homeland territory.
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The majority of the crashes have occurred with the Predator drone — which cost about $4 million each. That means the cost of these 400 known failures and crashes of drones have cost taxpayers approximately $1.6 billion over the last 14 years.