When U.S. air force Capt. Scott O'Grady's F-16 was shot down over Bosnia in June 1995, Americans watched anxiously as aircraft and helicopters searched for the missing pilot. When O'Grady was retrieved safely from a Balkan forest, TV networks cut to special bulletins. Two months later, an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft also crashed in hostile Bosnian territory. No attempt to search for the crew was made. The incident rated two lines near the back of most newspapers. Rather than dodging Serbs and eating bugs to survive comfortably, the operators of the Predator unmanned airplane were sitting in an air-conditioned shelter at the USAF's base at Aviano, Italy. The two incidents teach a critical lesson, which military aircraft designers are now heeding: Flights into dangerous airspace are best performed by fighter planes that don't put a pilot at risk. Small, pilotless, and ultimately disposal, these fighters are now on the drawing board.
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