In the past, I have "roamed" just about every AF, Army, and Navy development center, command centers and major intel shops there are, including the Pentagon, Omaha, the Springs, NATO, the UK, Germany and most other fine places here in the East. Except one--the White House. I was tired of living in vaults and SCIFs, too.

Been in most aircraft shops, on projects, sometimes as PM or CSE, including Boeing, Lockheed, Northrup-Grumman and earlier, Douglas, and quite a few subsystem suppliers, such as Itek and GE, and maybe 30 others.

I made my point, carefully: it was simply the place to stop.

...the USAF has been greatly neglecting that critical SIOP mission through the gradual relaxation of standards and tranining,...

I guess that DC loser has not been privy to any earlier SAC booboo reports, some of which were hair-raisers.

Drones are also fitted with auto pilots which allow them to "coast through" periods of effective jamming or heavy noise, and be reaquired by the mothership later on, when the S/N ratio for the link recovers.

Lacking recovery, the autopilot can fly the drone to any designated point within its range, and land it, or else destroy it on a target or in the air. This is true for the Predator, for instance.

I notice nobody has adequately addressed Wayne's point about the possibility that the electronic systems forming the link between UAVs and their remote controllers might be jammed. At that point, manned aircraft would be incredibly useful .

Certainly true. But presumably a system could jam the avionics on a human-driven aircraft. And we're going to have a full fleet of human-driven fighters as a backup in case the drones go down?