How the MQ-9 Reaper Works

One important thing to remember about the Reaper (and the Predator as well) is that the Reaper is a weapons system and not just an individual drone. Each Reaper system consists of four individual Reaper drones operated by four different flight teams (we'll talk about these flight teams a little more in the next section). The whole system costs about $54 million to build [source: USAF].