I am not an aerospace engineer, but the figure '20 uses' stood out to me as odd: if it's 20 uses, why not just build it to be easily serviceable indefinitely? With no pilot you massively simplify the set of engineering and materials problems, and if it's going to be reusable that many times you're still going to have to perform maintenance, refuel, re-arm, etc. What is so different between '20 uses' and 'decades'?
> What is so different between '20 uses' and 'decades'?
Millions of dollars, that's what. The ability to save costs by designing a limited-use airframe that cuts a few corners compared to a long-lasting airframe and has much lower servicing costs due to its short lifespan, while still being combat-effective within those constraints. Kamikaze aircraft in Japan were much more shoddily built than contemporary conventional Japanese aircraft; they were single use!
If they're expecting a 5% loss rate per mission, then there's no point making them last longer than 20 missions. You can also make things cheaper and more durable if they don't have to be designed to be disassembled.
If you expect to only fly them during missions with that loss rate. I thought planes were used mostly for training. There are not that many active wars being fought right now.
This is the military, where stuff gets routinely destroyed in normal use. It's probably more cost-effective to engineer for a finite lifespan, because even if they were designed to last longer, they are unlikely to.
Perhaps they're using that to establish a goal line of sorts? There's also the matter of cost. Eventually diffuse wear and tear from the launches and retrievals is going to cause components to fail at a higher frequency. The scales of 'continue repairing' vs 'buy new one' are going to tip towards 'buy new one'. I'm sure the old one will still be useful for something as well -- perhaps as a target drone.
