Those look like they'll be great targets for us to practice on the next time we get frisky. Hopefully they make a lot of them so we don't run out too quickly.

Guess what the F-22 can do when it's blown up everything it can with the missiles it has. Oh yes, it can act as an AWACS stand-in for other friendly aircraft.

Only difference is, when it's no longer needed as a stealth AWACS, it can go get more missiles and blow up more stuff.

Drones will eventually be the future of air combat, but they certainly aren't the be-all end-all answer for 2012 or even 2020. Find me the drone that can shoot down an F-22 and I'll happily support shelving every other plane in the arsenal in favor of them. Until then, they need a lot more R&D to get to a point where they can actually replace F-22s, F-16s, and F/A-18s.

All this talk about how much more drones can do is all theoretical. Theoretically, drones can reach speeds and performance characteristics no human pilot ever could. In practice, we don't have any yet that match up against Gen5 aircraft (or even many Gen4/Gen4.5 aircraft). Hoping against that reality doesn't clear skies of enemy aircraft.

You realize that in Red vs Blue combat exercises, F-22s are so dominant against F-15e aircraft (and everything else) that they don't allow the F-22s to engage BVR anymore and actually start a lot of the sorties with multiple "red" aircraft behind each F-22 to give them a chance? Most Gen4 aircraft have a very hard time locking an F-22 even if it's sitting right in front of them.

During Exercise Northern Edge in Alaska in June 2006, 12 F-22s of the 94th FS downed 108 adversaries with no losses in simulated combat exercises. In two weeks of exercises, the Raptor-led Blue Force amassed 241 kills against two losses in air-to-air combat; neither Blue Force loss was an F-22. Shortly after was Red Flag 07-1 in February 2007. Fourteen F-22s of the 94th FS supported Blue Force strikes and undertook close air support sorties themselves. Against superior numbers of Red Force Aggressor F-15s and F-16s, 6-8 F-22s maintained air dominance throughout. No sorties were missed because of maintenance or other failures, and only one Raptor was judged lost against the opposing force's defeat. F-22s also provided airborne electronic surveillance.

According to Lt. Col. Larry Bruce, 65th AS commander, aggressor pilots turned up the heat on the F-22 using tactics they believe to be modern threats. For security purposes these tactics weren't released; nonetheless, they said their efforts against the Raptors were fruitless.

"We [even] tried to overload them with numbers and failed," said Colonel Bruce. "It's humbling to fly against the F-22." This is a remarkable testimony because the Red Flag aggressor pilots are renowned for their skill and experience. Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, 94th Fighter Squadron commander, said the aggressor forces represent the most lethal threat friendly forces would ever face. http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123041725

The F-22 is an air dominance aircraft. You don't fly F-22s against Iraq (where there's no air force) or Afghanistan (where there's no air force). You fly them against countries fielding Gen4 aircraft that could actually give F-15s some trouble. You do that because the F-22 will shoot down everything in the sky that isn't friendly before the unfriendlies know there's an enemy in the area. The F-22 is the hedge against a country using Russian, Chinese, or French built aircraft.

If you want to talk about costs, you need to look at the costs of an AIM-120D ($700,000) vs the cost of one of those Russian/Chinese/French aircraft ($40 Million - $60 Million). Add to that the cost of training a modern fighter pilot ($2.5 Million) and I'd say we're stupid to not have these things in play. The F-22 dominates anything on any drawing board anywhere in the world. With the time and expense of designing and building modern aircraft, that means we could sit by without doing any upgrades on the F-22s for the next 15 years and still dominate any airspace on the globe. The simple fact is, there isn't a nation on Earth with aircraft that can do anything but die horribly against the F-22. So let's throw our $700,000 missiles at their $50 Million planes and bring our pilots home to their families. Or we can try it your way: mass produce slightly cheaper aircraft and lose tons of them the next time we face someone with an actual air force.

The F-35 tries to do too many things. I'd be happy to see that thing scrapped in favor of more specialized (and functional) replacements, but we can't because it'd piss off everyone who put money into the program (which is just about all our allies). Typical stupid political crap. The same is said for the scrapping of the F-22. First they cut production to a fraction of what it was supposed to be, then they rolled up all the R&D costs and complained about how much each plane cost the country. That'd be like a major pharmaceutical company spending $30 Billion on R&D for a drug that cures cancer, then deciding to only make 10 pills and bitch that each pill cost the company $3 Billion. Well yeah, if you only make 10 and roll the R&D costs into it, you get ridiculous numbers. If you actually make what you were originally planning, you get numbers that make sense. Actual unit cost on an F-22 is $150 Million (2009 flyaway cost). If they didn't have to spread the program all over the country, they'd probably cost $100 Million instead.

I say we cut the politics and the bullshit at the same time. The F-22 dominates every other aircraft in the sky and will continue doing so for the next 20 - 25 years with upgrades. Build them as cheaply and efficiently as possible and have them ready to go clear the skies wherever we need control of the air. Then design and build real replacements for the F/A-18 as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The F-16 can be replaced quite well with drones, but said drones should be designed with redundant self-destruct mechanisms in case of malfunction and multiple methods of location tracking. B-2s are just fine for bringing down large-scale air defense and when they're done with that, bring in the B-52s to flatten everything else.

My uncle gathered up all the old system 6/7 Macs that Boston area schools dumped over a decade ago and took them to South Africa. Two containers full, I think. He and his wife go over yearly to maintain them. They have some 600 computers running in some 25 schools.

A lot of them are Mac SEs, dating to 1987, some running with their original hard drives (you can hear a peculiar drive mechanism in those). These rugged little machines are still being productively used 25 years after their creation.

"That group of politicians are self-serving liars, but this group is benevolent and trying to help everyone!"

I knew there were still people like you out there, but I thought we'd pretty much fixed this kind of ignorance on Slashdot. I guess we've got some more work to do.

Here's a hint: neither side gives a shit about you. You're not even a pawn in their little game. At best, you're the chair they rest their fat, sweaty ass on while they play the game and get rich and powerful. That you believe you're on the same side or working towards similar goals is, quite frankly, pathetic.

If you want to see politicians who aren't stepping on every man, woman, and child to get a little higher up, look for the ones who've been marginalized as fanatical zealots and kooks. After all, in the game of politics, anyone who isn't crushing everyone else to get more money, power, and glory must be a lunatic.

Actually, if you want to make broad judgements, there's a much more significant group that makes up nearly all of the prison population. This group is so ill-adjusted, they are over represented in criminal activity by a factor of nearly 20:1. This group, of course, is men.

If you want to keep it real, you ought be a lot more concerned about why men are such fuck-ups before you worry about what color the men are.

A lot of what you're describing happens to a huge segment of the population at times.

I understand that most people have moments of getting a conversation stuck in their head, of stressing out in a crowd, of getting frustrated at nothing because you're tired.

There is a huge gap between that and being unable to restrain your temper because your morning routine is different. Of having to restrain your urge to flee (I mean straight up pounding heart and racing mind and flinching at all movement and being able to think of nothing other than getting from here to the exit by whatever means possible) from any average shopping center. Of having conversations running through your head that you won't have: will never have, but you can't stop rehearsing what you would say anyway, while finding yourself utterly unable to figure out what to say when someone unexpectedly surprises you with "hello".

I'm high functioning, as Aspies go. And yet a shopping center will reliably send me into a panic. I can't follow one conversation in a quiet room reliably, let alone in a noisy environment. I get completely thrown when I can't have my coffee in the morning in the proper routine, and it puts me off for the rest of the day, or longer. For some people any of this can happen if they're tired or low or having a bad day. For me this is every day. When things are going well, then the trolley moves smoothly enough on the rails. But it doesn't take much to derail completely, where most people are driving something far more all-terrain.

It's not just "occasional social awkwardness". There's much more going on that most people don't see. And it takes a lot of work to make it so that you don't see it.

If you'd RTFComment below, it expands on this quickly thrown out line, to say that what I describe above is the normal problem for accounting of Autism Numbers, and does not apply to the CDC study.

Which is to say, you're right, but neither this study nor its reporting is typical of the norm behind "ONOZ Autism Epidemic" hysteria.

"barely noticeable in everyday conversation to an untrained observer"

Whereas a trained observer may be able to spot it as they walk in the door, and it may be obvious to anyone given extended interaction (socially, professionally, family, whatever).

And in everyday conversation, people see the best behaviour, the greatest effort to pass as Like Everyone Else. They don't, as a rule, see the anxiety attacks, the stimming, the meltdowns and shutdowns, the continual gnawing fear that you're doing it all wrong and no-one will tell you, the desperate desire to go hide somewhere quiet and dark and alone, the continual rehearsing of social interactions in your head.

Just because you can't tell an Aspie when you pass one on the street, that doesn't mean they aren't suffering from it.

Trust me on this.