Aerospace analysts The Teal Group project that there will be 15, 000 drones in use in the U.S. by 2018.

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We're not likely to ever see that, said Teal Group aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia, because airlines are planning to fill the big space with seats, not duty-free shops.

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"You're nearing the tipping point where they need to regard this as a serious crisis, " said Richard Aboulafia, a senior analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia.

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"The U-2 is an extremely capable surveillance platform that has one key advantage: It has already been paid for, " said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with Teal Group, an aerospace consultancy.

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"All the sudden, you have these new visions for space exploration, and there's renewed excitement, " says Marco Caceres, senior analyst and director of space studies for aerospace consultancy the Teal Group.

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However, Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group, an aviation consultancy, thinks there is more technological risk with the Leap-X than with the GTF and greater uncertainty about whether it will deliver the same cost savings.

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As Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group aerospace consultancy observes in his August newsletter, the only stories concerning military aircraft that seem to make it into the news columns of most newspapers these days are reports about unmanned aircraft.

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"Their problem is that unless you have a network of thousands of planes and thousands of pilots, you're going to be dying for people to fly, " says Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.

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