Despite a distinguished record of developing and using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Canada's military services have had significant difficulties acquiring and integrating them into their force structure and operations. These experiences have differed across the services, however, with the Army and Navy much more at ease with UAVs than the Air Force. Why? Service differences are explained with a three variable innovation adoption framework that integrates cost, impetus, and disruptive nature. The Army and Navy framed UAVs as relatively inexpensive adaptive innovation that would help avoid operational failures. The Air Force framed UAVs as expensive disruptive innovation that could improve performance of core functions and were enthusiastic in theory but reluctant in practice. The Air Force experienced UAVs as an inexpensive adaptive innovation that helped avoid operational failure in support of the Army, but perceived these successes as inadequate and declined to build upon them. The framework developed and used here can capture differences in innovation across services that studies at the national level may miss.