Ever heard of Free Flight & SES... that would free a few
I'm not sure how that would free up controllers. I've seen repeated claims, but no details.
Under Free Flight, airplanes with FMS will allegedly fly Direct from origin to destination instead of being restricted to airways. So, instead of being on one of [10] airways in a sector, each will be on its own route. Without a complex computer program that sees ALL these routes and predicts ALL potential conflicts, the controller load would actually be higher. Then, if there is a computer outage, there will be even MORE potential for conflict than there is today, where we can at least revert to standard position reporting...
MAYBE the computer-based control scheme will eventually be proven to enable Free Flight, but I don't see it any time in the near future, especially given the track record of FAA software and system "improvements" in the past 20 years...