[Chainmail]

Respectfully disagree. As it is now, emerging anti-air systems are making the skies untenable for manned systems. The technologies at hand or available soon will make entirely autonomous unmanned systems overwhelmingly capable. Air-to-air combat while carrying a delicate, pressure and temperature and atmosphere sensitive package that we have to worry about being killed or captured isn't going to be sustainable in the future battlefield.

We can't afford to be left behind the rest of the world, so we need to lose "humans will always be needed" attitude and press ahead. The glory days of Sopwiths and Hellcats and Raptors are almost over. It's going be similar stories for ground and sea combat too, so don't hang out at the O-club and whine.

It's that, or learn Mandarin.

[Chainmail]

Drat the “mystery double poster”!

[Yo-Yo]

UAVs today are not autonomous. They are remotely piloted by a human at a videogame console. Lose the link, lose the aircraft.

I can imagine a swarm of 2,000 small attack aircraft all falling out of the sky simultaneously because a version of STUXNET wormed it’s way into the attacker’s servers.