Think some of you might be being a little harsh on Watchkeeper
The Royal Artillery have been operating unmanned aerial vehicles since 1964. After Midge and its successor programme, MRUASTAS, Phoenix came into service in 1998 and despite having a high loss rate, in 2003 was credited by General Brimms (GOC 1(UK) Armoured Division) as being the top 3 war winning assets in the initial stages of the Iraq war, along with Challenger and Warrior.
It played a significant part in the counter battery role that allowed UK ground forces to avoid being engaged heavily by Iraqi artillery. OK, so loss rates were high but it was never designed for the weather and in some ways, was pretty innovative, its integration with Royal Artillery fire control software and separating the payload from the air vehicle for example.
Watchkeeper developed from this, lessons learned in real operations so you could argue that as the F35 has evolved from Harrier, Watchkeeper has evolved from Phoenix.
It was initially evolved from SENDER and SPECTATOR and was meant to have two air vehicles. Unlike Reaper (then), Watchkeeper was always a core programme and so things like operation in UK airspace, low temperatures, poor weather, EO/SAR/GMTI, automatic take off and landing, rough feld performance, secure UK datalinks, expeditionary deployment systems, training facilities and full logistics support is included.
The figure includes 54 air vehicles and 13 ground systems as well.
As a stopgap, Hermes 450 was deployed to Afghanistan where it collected the majority of airborne imagery used by UK ground forces and clocked over 60,000 hours.
The deployment for a small number of flying hours by Watchkeeper last year was to prove the systems and concepts.
I know the RA has had a few issues and it might be easy to be cynical but they have more experience of unmanned systems than most and have dragged a system into service that is operable in all theatres and fully supported.
I think you also miss the point that it is a tactial system for use at Brigade level , not a theatre wide asset that may be retasked