We are the Romulans. We have Camouflage

In a late follow up to an older story on ultimative weapons I pray, consider this:

Last year while flying to I do not remember where I got myself #3 of Volume 9 of "Flight Journal", an American magazine on - guess - aeroplanes. It had interesting stuff on the F/A 22, ahem "Raptor", the most powerful fight/attack craft in operation today. One paragraph nicely confirmed what I had read earlier and did not remember where. I quote:

"Most losers in air-to-air combat never see their end coming. Since the very beginning in WW I, the majority of most engagements have been decided not by the raw performance of the fighters or their pilots' dogfighting skills but by who saw whom first. One study estimates that in approximately 80 percent of all air-to-air fights, the victor scores the kill before the victim even knows he's under attack." and later on "To defeat an opponent without getting into a close-in dogfight, a fighter pilot needs to do three things: detect the oponnent first, avoid being detected and get into killing range and shoot before the enemy can react."

These are actually 4 things if you don't count getting into killing range and (automatically) shooting as one.

So much for the schoolyard ethics presented in the "topgun" air- and spacefight movies we (most of boys and some of the girls) like.

The stuff I read years ago had the figure at "above 85%", if I remember rightly. Computer Aided Prosthetics is what counts nowadays and nobody can afford to let them beat up thrice before pinning the bad guy on a stalagtite.