Gentleman,
As a private designer of collision avoidance systems, your commentary on this thread is extremely valuable and infinitely respected, professionally. I can't agree more that the deployment of pilotless commercial passenger aircraft faces an uphill battle all the way. Publically, 5 years working for the FAA has taught me the glacial pace of technological change in civil aviation--and that is when a basic idea is sound and supported by both the public AND professional communities. In the case of the particular idea we're discussing, both those assumptions are seriously in doubt.
IMHO, neither the pilot nor the air traffic controller are going anywhere in this lifetime. Limited use may be made of UAS for the military, law enforcement, and freight ops. IF the record of these ops goes 10-15 years without a hitch, THEN we may begin to see more extensive freight-handling, with a possibility of limited single-pilot passenger flights (the co-pilot being stationed on terra firma). BUT--I believe that's about as far as passenger flights will get in the next 50-100 yr. Why? Because Murphy's Law, politics, and human nature & wisdom will join hands to keep humans in the loop.
I once wrote an auto-CAS system based on Martin Eby's "force-field" algorithm. You could aim 10 aircraft all at a single point, and they'd miraculously jockey around each other. Cool. But, it never occurred to me that time could be a negative number inside a computer. So, once 2 a/c passed each other, repulsion became attraction (because time to contact went negative). And, in some instances, we ended up with a/c orbiting around one another in a neat, little circle. Lesson: Just because the guy who thought of the idea came from M.I.T. doesn't mean that the schmuck (i.e. me!) programming the computer code has thought of all the ways this thing could go wrong. Nor has his manager (what about the mixed-equipage situation??).
This is why (a) engineers should listen to pilots & controllers, (b) we can't let common sense leave the building, (c) we should give pilots & controllers good decision SUPPORT tools--not ones that make all the decisions for them.
Y'all are terrific. Take care.
WR "Billy Bob" Knecht