[TheRealThing]

You may not think it's going to happen, but the development has been long underway, and the drones have already been tested.

Of course, there will always be fighters and fighter pilots, but there are distinct advantages to having unmanned aerial combat fighters.
-Longer flights
-Less weight (no cockpit, life sustaining equipment, etc.)
-Higher speeds and maneuverability
-Most importantly no loss of pilot life if shot down or a crash


You all are being a little over dramatic here, I'm saying that a reduction in flight time by combat fighters seems natural. We are not in open combat against anyone who has any type of Airforce. Most if not all of the current missions can likely be completed with drones. And as I stated above, this is only a reduction of 17 hours per fighter over the course of a year.

But in your all's eyes we are on the verge of WW3.

Yeah well, as I mentioned, you might want to clue in Air Force Chief Scientist Dr. Endsley on your outlook for the near future. I don't see it that way. Military commanders speak of being in a "state of readiness". There is a very good reason for that as PTfan has correctly pointed out. We were indeed 'woefully' unprepared for the last major war. There is no doubt that WW3 is coming, when that will be depends on how long our enemies to be will be content filling a subservient role to America as we dominate world trade.

Today's war machines are not just belched out on assembly lines like they were during WW2. It takes time and money to build the techno-wonders our military needs to dominate the seas and future battlefields. We only have about 185 F-22 Raptors in our inventory. That is anemic fleet for the once vaunted American air superiority fighter group. Similar numbers plague the F-35 program. The problem is, we won't have time to build anything to respond to serious threat. This isn't the 1940's when crossing the pacific was a daunting task that took weeks. Sortied Russian ships, for the sake of argument, could have submarines within 200 miles of our coastline in less than a day if they were called on to do so.

Our problem is not that we spend too much on defense. Our problem is that nobody knows where all the money we spend on defense actually goes. I believe ours', is more a problem of oversight. It is not hard for me to imagine the Armed Services implementing an accounting group beholden to congress only, rather than a particular branch of the military. They could all be Warrant Officers assigned to sort the current state of spending affairs into something that could be understood by congressional funding committees.

The long story made short is this. While we flounder around over here arguing about military hardware and military spending, the bad guys of the world have their eye on the golden goose. It's past naïve to suppose that war is a thing of distant past. It's true, we haven't known a serious threat for decades but, there is a very good reason for that. Our military deterrent has been on display for the world to marvel at. Liberals and Libertarians all wrongly believe we should fall back behind our own borders as our line of defense.

Duh, would not that mean to fight an enemy we would necessarily have to engage them here in this country? The line of rationale I hear them making is we could save all this money if we just defend our own lands. The whole picture seems to get lost with these guys. It's way better to fight a war on your enemy's soil than on your own. The last time I checked, war leaves a terrible mess behind, does it not?