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“Backward thinking, time over target belongs to the drone. Cost of plane, goes to the drone. Stop peeing away tax payers money.”

That’s great, except for the minor detail that there’s no such thing as an air-to-air drone at this point. Or are we going to see the org.whodat drone debut soon? ;-)

It’s going to be hard to replace having human eyes evaluating the situation, and human judgement pulling the trigger. In a engagement with a “real” enemy (China or Russia) the electronic warfare and space environment will likely prevent any kind of remote communication with our vehicles.

That’s great, except for the minor detail that there’s no such thing as an air-to-air drone at this point.

There will be. There are things in testing and have been for a long time - keep an eye out on all of the major aerospace publications and websites, a lot of things are being worked on. A few years ago, the USAF released an unclassified "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan" that looks ahead to 2047 or 2050, and they do plan on UAVs taking over air-to-air combat, and other nations do as well.

Back in 2002, there were Predators equipped with Stingers flying over the no-fly zones of Iraq, and the AF even tried engaging an Iraqi fighter or two. Unfortunately the avionics were not up to the task and the one publicized engagement resulted in the Predator's Stinger locking onto a missile that an Iraqi jet fired rather than the Iraqi jet itself. There actually was more going on, but I'm just referring to the publicized events.

It's nothing new - back in the 1970s, the AF rigged some existing fighters to be unmanned and then had them go up against manned fighters. It wasn't pretty. When you take the human out of the cockpit, it's amazing some of the maneuvers an aircraft is capable of, even an aircraft designed for humans.

It’s going to be hard to replace having human eyes evaluating the situation, and human judgement pulling the trigger. In a engagement with a “real” enemy (China or Russia) the electronic warfare and space environment will likely prevent any kind of remote communication with our vehicles.

The environment that you are talking about makes it just as difficult regardless of whether there is a human in the cockpit or not. Besides, the environment you are talking about is the kind of environment that would probably be best suited to cruise missiles that don't rely on outside guidance, or incredibly stealthy UAVs. There is a reason why we sent so many cruise missiles into Iraq, and the advances we've made since 1991 and 2003 are substantial.