Originally Posted by
badflaps
I don't think you can make a case for a manned fighter going forward.
But nobody has the AI technology for an unmanned fighter, not even close.
You could program such an airplane to do a lot of scripted tasks but there's no assurance, or way to provide assurance, that it couldn't be fooled or spoofed.
Human pilots can learn, and are flexible enough to recognize non-reality most of the time.
Unmanned could probably do cookie-cutter tasks better than humans on average (ie landing), but throw it a curve and the results are unpredictable at this point.