depending on the municipality and who owns the property, some get taken down while others don't. in Chicago, we put up ghost bikes for everyone in the community that dies while riding. the dept. of streets and sanitation will remove them if they're locked to things like light posts or bus stops, but will leave them if they're locked to bike racks (plentiful here) or private property. the Illinois DOT has a standing policy to not remove memorials, so anything under say, an overpass won't be touched.

and generally, the bike used is donated, not the bike involved in the death. the parts will be welded to deter theft. some have signs, some don't

father brown sez

"It really frightens me that so many people on this little message board know so much about fighter planes, weaponry and war.

Maybe it's the evil influence of 90s video battles games come to fruition."

not likely. i'd chalk it up to interest in cutting-edge technology and international politics, which often hinge on what nation has what military capability.

Codesuidae, the US and other nations export "sanitized" versions of their hardware to other nations, without the advanced equipment that really gives them the edge in battle. there's always the spectre of having say, Japan or Egypt sell some of it's tech to someone we don't like, say Myanmar.

dogfights will happen again, definitely. it'll be F22s and F15Es against Iranian F14s and Su27s or a slew of chinese fighters. we have had the luxury of fighting against nations with little to no functioning air force, since we can pick our battles right now.

we've been through one nuclear cold war, it will be a similar situation if we get into one with china.

if boingboing were to pow-wow with schactman and the rest of the defensetech writer staff, they would tell you that there aren't any "fifth generation" soviet aircraft flying or even in any real development, and that their avionics and weapons packages are greatly inferior to the US and other NATO fighters. PRC would have to fly many hundreds of them to gain air superiority over the F22.