The exercise featured a human-piloted F-22 Raptor issuing real-time commands to the MQ-20 drone, which responded by carrying out a range of mission tasks.
The MQ-9 could not be recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, but the Air Force and General Atomics used data to piece together what likely caused its crash.
It's a loss of aircraft worth more than $200 million in what is becoming the most dramatic cost to the Pentagon of the military campaign against the group.