[Southack]

"You bet, but stealthy, and that is a big requirement."

Stealth is good. Speed is good. Altitude is good. Range is good.

High costs, however, can be deal-killers. Likewise, having a pilot in the cockpit limits the number of G's that can be pulled. Moreover, not being able to go into Space means that we're behind civilians in the technology race...a bad place to be in general when you are depending upon technology to win the fight.

[Gunrunner2]

Bulk buy and you reduce the cost per unit to something palatable.

Stealth ensures survivability and this translates to force multiplication.

Pilots in the cockpit for years and years to come. No matter what people think about technology and UCAV and Predator and RPV's in general, like I've said before, until you can replicate actually being there you are never going to have the air sense, the situational awareness to fight with unmanned vehicles effectively.

(BTW: Many years ago for a brief moment in the Pentagon there was a PC movement that tried to gain ground and lost. The PC movement wanted to change "unmanned" to "uninhabited." You see, to have "man" in the name was sexist. This movement never caught on. . .but it still is lurking out there.)