_Phoenix
turbulence = noised input for inertial. Good luck with that:
Rate aiding from inertials has been used for decades. It can and does cope with all sorts of disturbances. The only question is do you allow the system to shift a datum or must it try to return to the original. Look at some modern helicopters in rock solid hovers, I suspect the vast majority of them are using inertial stabilisation. My pilot friends tell me that hovering in gusty wind conditions is about as hard as it gets. So keeping an aircraft in steady safe flight, at least within the same bounds as that expected of a pilot, is not really going to be that difficult, surely? On the principle that such systems operate already I don't need luck, just expertise.
As for the old pitot debate. The requirement is not to measure airspeed, but the air's ability to support the lift you want to generate and interlinked the amount of drag that that will result in. Give or take, a pitot static system does this directly. I can't think of any other method that will, so we would then have to measure some other property or properties and carry out a translation. That's why pitots are still with us. Yes they ice, but then they de-ice pretty quickly too, so you are left having to maintain stable flight for a relatively short time until you get them back. It appears to be the case that misleading airspeed is the dangerous condition. Take away airspeed and pilots adapt using other fall back parameters. But present airspeeds that contradict other indications and rapidly SA is lost as pilots try to establish what they need to use to "steer" safely, meanwhile the machine already has a large set of reliable inputs it can use to maintain safe flight.
So back to my original point.
Give the correct information to the pilots to let them decide what to do, then let the machine get on with the doing.