An issue limited to reconnaissance flights, particularly unmanned drones these days. That is an issue going back beyond Francis Gary Powers. There will be fighter jet pilots for a long time......
Google Combat UAV and you will find that the long time may be a shorter time than one would think. The costs involved with keeping a pilot on the aircraft in terms of maneuverability (g limits) and environmental support cooling/heating/pressurization/protection of the cockpit are very large. There are already trials of air refueling combat UAVs, carrier landings with combat UAVs. But remember, these are rarely 'pilot-less' robot aircraft they are remotely piloted FBW aircraft with the pilot sometimes in a different continent so these fighter pilots will be around just not in the same place as the aircraft. A comfortable position to be in that allows the pilot to take more risks and walk away from every hull loss.
Simulation vs Reality
This raises a human factors issue on AF447 and training that I have not seen raised.
Simulations are used for training of all sorts of exigences there is no-one I know that has got into a simulator check ride where it is a boring flight and everything goes smoothly. It is expected that emergencies and failures will be exercised purely because they are not exercised 'in real life' - the raison d'etre of the simulator industry. This mentally sets up the trainee to
expect problems in sim rides - and not to expect any emergency in the thousands of hours of mundane real world flight. There is a huge mental difference between being in a nice safe simulator exercise trying to please the training team behind you and being in a real world aircraft that has suddenly started an unscripted series of alarms and instrument failures knowing that your life is on the line -- or perhaps not fully understanding that your life is on the line.
I like many military pilots was fortunate (?) to be trained in an era when simulators were unreal and extremely expensive and actual flying was considered cheap. So all real emergency handling practice was carried out in real aircraft with imaginative instructors causing the emergencies. Instrument recovery from unusual positions was carried out from under a 'hood' with a '
you have control' midway through a high g aerobatic sequence - multiple times an hour. The trainee was in a REAL aircraft and having to do REAL recoveries.
The mental shock of a 'simulator exercise' suddenly happening in real life can lead to all sorts of human factors issues - some people who are good in simulated practices go to pieces in real life. Its a little late to learn that when the AP drops out with the wrong PF.
There could be a need for some kind of psychological assessment for FBW pilots. Or, more likely, even if the bean counters wouldn't like them, the old methods of using small aerobatic training aircraft to assess pilots were the right ones.