The Llanbedr Jindivigs were hardly an ISTAR asset being flown on ops now were they? Although I have to say that they were an impressive capability nonetheless that slipped my mind in the scramble to take a cheap shot.
I agree that 3 Preds gives no margin for error at all. But you'll also find that MOD MB cares nothing for Abbey Wood's predictions of attrition as it takes everything "at risk" these days.
The point with an unmanned asset is that, even if they cost £10m a throw, it would make them prohibitively expensive to develop the same levels of reliability and redundancy that a manned aircraft has - something that seemed to be lost on DFlying some years ago (2004) when he demanded that they should have an order of magnitude greater! level of safety than manned aircraft.
yeah right.
Mind you, on the subject of Pred/Reaper, one has to ask why the RAF plumped for something that needed a pilot to actually remote-fly it rather than one that flew itself within parameters set by the operator. Wouldn't be old-style service protectionist thinking by any chance?