rickair7777

This assessment is right on. There are many things which a human mind on scene can simply do better. UAS's (UAV's) will continue to grow into their niche: long endurance endurance loitering missions, either purely sensor or sensor w/ weapons ready on-station.

I would expect to see combat UAV's working in close coordination and under the direction of manned tactical aircraft. This allows an optimal mix of capabilities.

The Isrealis have stated flat out that they do NOT forsee a future without manned combat aircraft... and they are planning accordingly. Unmanned aircraft capabilities are not limited by engineering constraints...they are limited by the fact that we cannot build artificial minds with human-like capabilities. Modern computers are not even in the same universe with our own minds. They can do more bulk processing in a quantity sense, but they cannot exercise imagination or creativity, or really learn on their own...and there is no indication that this is going to change any time soon.

Unmanned civilian freighters will likely only be fielded after the military does it...the airlines cannot afford on their own the R&D and reengineering of the national airspace system just to eliminate the jobs of a few thousand pilots. And the military is very unlikely to bother for these reasons:

- It would be almost inconceivable that we would operate military pax/troop transports where human pax are flown without human pilots on board. Human nature won't go there.

- Most military transports have two or three purposes: Cargo, Troop Transport, Ariel Refueling. Our transport fleet is flexible, and we are not likely to want to deploy transport/refueler aircraft which cannot shift missions to carry troops because they are unmanned! We are supposed to be doing more with less...

- Since military transports operate largely in civil airspace, you still have the problem of re-engineering the domestic AND global airspace systems.