What are the different risks and rewards of using UAVs? | Explained

The story so far: The sight of two Chinese Unmanned Aerial Vehicles over waters near Okinawa recently had Japan scrambling to pursue them. By virtue of being unmanned, sending a UAV for a reconnaissance mission seems like a low-hanging fruit, where the mission may be just as effective without endangering human life, or risking an expensive inhabited aircraft. Given that UAVs are also met with less drastic forms of retaliation, countries can see them as an easy way to perform actions that they would not otherwise. Air-to-air missiles like the one India used via a Su-30 in 2019 are far more expensive than the dual-use UAVs they are used to bring down. In the case of larger fixed-wing UAVs like the Bayraktar TB-2, which is akin to most inhabited military aircraft in terms of size and endurance, in the unlikely event that it ventures into Indian airspace, given the lower associated level of threat, India will have to figure out how to address the issue without risking further escalation.