Originally Posted by
Davef68
Could an Air Defence fighter ever be unmanned or remotely operated? Physics would dictate that you would have a (small) lag time between the observation, command and execution of any manouvre or operation.
Once you have sensor fusion across every spectrum (MW/IR/Visual) the rest is down to the core logic but we are a long way from that. As with self-driving road cars versus Formula 1 race cars, we will see airline pilots replaced first. Fully automated FJs twirling around each other in 6th Gen "dogfights" are at least 30 years away and probably more like 50.
But would you really want to hang a nuke on one of them ?