Aluminium
I suspect that you are referring to me with your comment about pontificating?
If so, what makes you think you know my background?
Does Airline, Corporate, Military rotary and Military fixed wing qualify me to pontificate?
Does having operated with and in extremely close proximity to RPAVs for many many hours over Iraq, Afghanistan qualify me to have an opinion?
If not, then tell me what your qualifications are?
Those who believe the technological challenges are insurmountable should ponder on this.
Various militaries in the world are testing autonomous UCAVs
These are unmanned, autonomous combat aircraft.
Autonomous X-47B Flies In Formation With Fighter Aircraft | Popular Science
These aircraft must find must take-off (from a carrier in this case) navigate, find and kill the enemy, navigate home and then land on.
No beacons, no radio control, no atc, no TCAS.
Many believe that the F22, F35, Typhoon etc will be the last generation of manned fighters.
Few on here would pretend that an airline pilot needs to be or is as highly trained or flexible as a combat pilot in the military. Militaries all over the world spend years and millions of pounds selecting and training each military pilot.
Yet for some reason the militaries truly believe that a computer can do the job better. Even though an average military mission is vastly more complex and changeable than a civvy flight, with vastly more variables to deal with and vastly more tasks to accomplish such as air to air refuelling, deck landings, combat, combat damage, defending, attacking, ECM, ESM, formation flying etc etc
For some reason those idiots in the military truly believe that they can do all that without a pilot.
What fools they must be....
Unless you truly believe that the job of an airline pilot is somehow a greater challenge.....?
As with many things in technology, things trickle down from the military, and compared to what they are trying to do with combat aircraft, airliners are childs play.