TAMPA, FL -- U.S. Special Operations Command intends to play a role in shaping future requirements for the Air Force's successor program to its MQ-9 Reaper drone, according to senior officials at the annual the SOF Week conference here.

The command is “having those conversations at the acquisition level and the operational level” with the Air Force to make sure “SOF peculiar needs are being thought of early in the process,” Col. Justin Bronder, SOCOM’s program executive officer for fixed-wing aviation, told reporters yesterday.

Air Force officials recently announced they plan to develop a cheaper drone to succeed the MQ-9 that would have intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as well as precision strike capabilities, Inside Defense reported last week.

Because funding for SOCOM typically represents about 2% of the Defense Department’s annual budget, the command can’t afford to build a large UAV program, Bronder said Tuesday.

“By definition, we’re very much baked in with what the services are doing in looking for a future service-to-SOF transition, more like we did with the MQ-9 and MQ-1 programs where we were pathfinding,” he said.

When it comes to the adaptive airborne enterprise, SOCOM wants to take agnostic platforms such as the MQ-9 and use them as a “host platform,” Acquisition Executive Melissa Johnson said during the roundtable.

“The end goal is how do I do those things on board launching kinetic or non-kinetic effects, other data transport from a host aircraft,” she said. “But basic physics still applies. Size, weight, and power. So, you're always going to have physical limitations.”

As of April 9, 24 MQ-9s had been destroyed during the current U.S. military campaign in Iran representing a $720 million loss, CBS News reported.