Vessbot, I agree with most of your points #13.
I failed to expand on ‘need’ or the associated ‘skills’. This weakness is often encountered when discussing manual flying - not the physical actions, but the amalgamation (a feedback loop process) of mental and physical activity.
Everyone knows what they mean, and then assumes that everyone else has the same understanding - which would be incorrect.
You provide a good description of joint physical and mental skill components of ‘manual flying’, they should not (cannot) be separated. Not additional skills, but adjustment in the balance of mental / physical components.
The initial use of automation overlooked the requirement to reinforce the mental skills, this was further complicated by an expanding range of operations enabled by automation.
Modern ideas on skill sets appear to be strengthening the mental components, but not everyone agrees with the need, or do not have the mechanism for training these aspects (how do you teach situation awareness). The ‘need’ of old style manual flying is reducing; technology has sufficient capability that every aircraft can ‘feel’ the same (cf same type ratings). Technology also reduces other tasks, e.g.the need for compensating trimming with configuration change or for engine failure.
Conversely the mental skills required for managing the automation and associated technical systems should be enhanced and practiced, or in some instances taught as basic - critical thinking, thinking ahead.
‘Monitoring’ is the modern mantra, but monitor what. The flight path - what the aircraft is doing, yet many texts discuss monitoring automation, and thus pilots spend more time checking FMAs vice considering what the aircraft is actually doing compared to that required, or as they requested the automation to do.
Our different views are primarily with language, which can often result misunderstandings.
Not ‘additional’ skills, but the development of existing mental skills according to situation.
Pilots are an arbiter between what is required and what was intended, involving situation awareness and decision making; ‘responsibility’ could invoke blame and error.
‘Responsibility’ should never be passed to a machine.
I disagree with the ‘drone’ analogy, but this would be another subject.
As for the procedure observed in #1, often known as a Shared Monitored Approach, this could be a very good basis for enhancing the skills required today, even though the procedure may not be as originally envisaged.
‘Shared’, can be taught as the partnership between crew and machine and the transference of activities; the concept of ‘Monitoring’ aligns with the need to refocus skills to identify and choose what is important in a particular situation.
It is also a procedure which can be used with or without autopilot / autothrust; but that requires a change of mind set.