and .. YUP .. every link, too. All that time thinking, YET AGAIN! Could never believe, could never understand how the meme that Bush et all, and now still the Generals, could be soooooooooo surprised at the strength and intelligence of the insurgency; the freedom fighters, whatever the wish is to call them. It doesn't really matter to the dead. That just never did add up. How could the strength, the intelligence, the courage and the fortitude be a surprise to any of them, when it was seen as such an obvious inevitability to so many ordinary people as we are, here, there and everywhere? Way back when, I posted many times "Ask the Soviets". It was always the thought.
Then, of course, again another 8 year obvious, the need to, and STILL the battle to get the Afghanistan population onside. Again your ..
A battle of, i guess mostly rifles and homemade bombs and a few rockets .. against machine guns, grenades, drones .. piloted in multi American cities, i guess .. posted many on that in the past, too .. ok ..
US Air Force Prepares Drones to End Era of Fighter Pilots The Pentagon aims to robotise 15% of US armed forces by 2015 by Edward Helmore
As part of an expanding programme of battlefield automation, the US Air Force has said it is now training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots and signalled the end of the era of the fighter pilot is in sight.
In a controversial shift in military thinking - one encouraged by the now-confirmed death of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a drone-strike on 5 August - the US air force is looking to hugely expand its fleet of unmanned aircraft by 2047.
Just three years ago, the service was able to fly just 12 drones at a time; now it can fly more than 50. At a trade conference outside Washington last week, military contractors presented a future vision in which pilotless drones serve as fighters, bombers and transports, even automatic mini-drones programmed to attack in swarms. [...]
This Terminator-like vision [...]
Some 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones are now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2015, the Pentagon's $230bn arms procurement programme Future Combat Systems expects to robotise around 15% of America's armed forces. In a recently published study, The Unmanned Aircraft System Flight Plan 2020-2047, air force generals predicted a boom in drone funding to $55bn by 2020 with the most exotic changes coming in the 2040s.
Last month, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates underscored the change in strategic thinking .. [...]
In June Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, said he couldn't envision a day when he had enough surveillance assets. [...] ..
Some analysts view the Flight Plan study as a virtual death knell for the pilot profession .. more American jobs lost .. sigh ..
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