Very few people have pleasant feelings towards locusts; there was a plague of them in the Old Testament, and their reputation hasn't improved much since then. Locusts operate in swarms, and so do these sophisticated drone devices. LOCUST stands for Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology, and they launch in swarms of 30.
They confuse enemy radar and technology, attracting fire away from larger planes and interfering with their communications arrays. As they're unmanned, they're completely expendable - and they're also cheap to manufacture.