How do you integrate manned and unmanned aircraft into and out of the same runways at current capacity flow?
The controlled choas of max rate landings and departures at KEWR and similar come to mind.
Will ATC have to change? Who will fund that?
Is there enough bandwidth at enough rate globally? If not, who will pay for this? CPDLC is not fast enough for terminal operations, is it? The latest and greatest is probably not up to the task.
Pilotless planes today are not autonomous, someone does the taleoff and landing locally and those that are more automated get a huge airspace restriction around their launch and recovery.
In an unmanned combat vehicle, the weight that was the crew and life support systems becomes increased payload and firepower- do we see those first? Pilot, seat, etc weigh equal a few more missiles and have reduced physical limitations in play.
Pilotless passenger and even cargo aircraft will be clean sheet designs, yet will need all the air condtiing and pressurization systems, so they have pay for themselves just in labor costs, not weight saved and payload gained. Attractive in some principles, but someone new gets to work all the unglamorous bits of the duty.
Each paper gain comes with fresh vulnerabilities.
How will single pilot come into play? Will that also be a fresh generation of aircraft? How will that interact with ATC and bandwidth needs? Who funds that stepping stone? Customers? Governments?
Last edited by moosepileit; 20th Jun 2019 at 04:37.