The Global Hawk system has been EXTRAORDINARILY effective in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those in the know agree that we can't get more of them fast enough. Is airborne recce technology expensive? I suppose, but I recommend you ask the grunts who were facing some mechanized bad guys in a sand storm during the run down to Baghdad in the spring of '03. Ask THEM how much it was worth to be able to cream those toads because we knew where they were when they thought we were blind. Trust your troops. The GH (and other systems) can tell them things the enemy doesn't want us to know--24/7, with or without a sky full of sand.
That is odd.