[Mousekill]

They do crash a lot. I walked away from two crashes myself as the camera guy (dumb UAV humor). The Shadow is the system I'm familar with, so it's the only one I can say much about with confidence. The plane's structure is fairly simple. Whenver it's possible, crashed planes are recovered and the parts sent back to the factory for reuse. Even the brand new planes are Frankenstiens and include pieces from crashed planes. The system also has a pretty significant team of contractors that deploys at various levels with the system. It doesn't seem too far fetched that if a large number of systems were deployed, these contractors and the enlisted UAV mechanics could canibalize broken and crashed planes to keep a dwindling but sizable fleet of them working

The payloads are a different story. They are sophisticated and delicate and don't seem to survive crashes much. Over time, I could see these payloads becoming very scarce and users having to Yankee Engineer new payloads. One example might be a simple digital camera that pops pictures at a given interval, storing pictures onto its internal memory card that doesn't transmit imagery back to the operator and must be physically recovered from the plane (which could make for a cool mission - recovering imagery from an air vehicle that crashed somewhere inconvenient).

I honestly don't know what an EMP would do them. The engines are pretty basic and don't have much in the way of electronics that I'm aware of. The engine isn't started by a guy yelling contact and spinning the prop, but it's very close. The control surfaces are moved by servos. Electronics handle input from the control shelter, handle the planes automatic functions, and transmit the imagery. The plane uses GPS for navigation and to transmit imagery, so the satellites being slagged would pose a problem. The control shelters are just an excuse to stuff lots computers into the back of a Humvee, so that could be a problem. We were never nuked and the GPS always worked.