"Less than $50,000 to make"? It's a radio controlled plane for fuck's sake!

I'll second that.
I built a nearly identical plane 25 years ago, it cost about $125, and another $200 for the controller setup. It's wings were made of fiberglass/graphite spars inside dense foam cores...easy to build, easy to repair, and didn't hurt if it hit a person. (it did only have about a 15 min flight time without thermals, but batteries and motors are better now) Why are they going with carbon fiber for a non-combat fixed wing drone over fiberglass and/or foam (or are they testing combat drones)? Is it just to make it cost more? Why not just CNC mill them out of titanium billets? ;-)

$50K? Something smells here. Should be under $1K unless there's a lot we aren't seeing. Maybe it's all in the electronics and optics (it would need a bit more than a cell phone camera), but it still seems exorbitant. I think it could be more efficient to make them cheap and disposable/recyclable rather than 'hardened'.

TowerHobbies
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0093p?&C=AAM

I would think that thy have on board cameras and recordings or live transmitting to drive up that cost and another 100% increase just because it will be use by governments

It's commerically built, and governed by FAA restrictions.

That's how much your RC plane would cost if done "the right way" with all the extra steps and testing the bureaucracy demands.

Moving this video to SFOGuy's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

That was a terrible launch! Seriously, that was BAD. Good thing it's Fiberglass.
Having flown FPV aircraft before they would have been better off with one of these: http://www.fpvmodel.com/latest-version-skywalker-2014-1800mm-fpv-rc-plane_g6.html
It would have cost a ton less too...

They... hired... that woman... for a speaking job