Who says AI? Get someone to control it from miles away. CONTROLLED, not pre-programmed. Do that and you've solved the AI problem already.
That guy will be in a virtual cockpit with better visibility than any A-10 pilot, without the fear of losing his life and a better idea of where friendlies and foes are.

UAV's may not completly replace fighter pilots however they are what the next generation of war will be like, alrady the US Military is creating special robot divisions and Isreal posses a UAV Boat, The fact of the matter is the human element of war is slowly being removed as it is being a way to try to help save lives, Computers in some cases may prove to be better than humans. There is a chance Computer controlled weapons will be in the front lines of WW3, with the Units being on the front lines and thier controllers being miles away.

Let me answer your question with the quote from my above post.

Originally Posted by the_13th_redneck

Who says AI? Get someone to control it from miles away. CONTROLLED, not pre-programmed. Do that and you've solved the AI problem already.
That guy will be in a virtual cockpit with better visibility than any A-10 pilot, without the fear of losing his life and a better idea of where friendlies and foes are.

Originally Posted by Whispering Death

What happens to your 50 million dollar jet when its remote control communications get jammed...

Well you have to start somewhere. I mean i wouldn't have trusted the Spruce Goose dropping bombs :P But as we start progressing they will undoubtedly get better and after a few generations of planes be very trustworthy. I mean pretty much every weapon ever convieced has gone through this phase. The first rifles used were prone to blowing up in the users face. But they kept improving and now we have a staple of combat today. Give it time and they will be just as usefull.

who knows, one day they might be incrediably cheap and mass produced so you would have the air swarming with hundreds of 1000 dollar UAVs

Originally Posted by Whispering Death

Let me answer your question with the quote from my above post.

The UAV is not going to cost 50 million dollars. A key factor about UAVs is just HOW MUCH cheaper they are compared to manned aircraft.
There are risks involved in this. It's not fail safe. But you can see what I'm getting at. When it works, it'll be just as effective, if not more, and a heck of a lot cheaper. Also no one dies.
The MAIN problem is... what if someone on the other side is able to hack in and control the damn plane?

Who knows...
maybe for close air support they could have VTOL UAVs that are actually controlled by the Army itself. A strike request goes to HQ, HQ's Air strike team quickly writes up a flight script for a UAV and sends it on its merry way. 5 minutes and the bombs are dropped.

The truth of the matter is even the 'manned' aircraft we have are basicly computer controlled on some level with the people just thier to fly it when necessary, like the F-117 and the B-2.

Well for bombers they are working right now on a stealth bomber that will be fully AI controlled that can takeoff from the U.S. fly into a hostile location drop 4 JDAM bombs onto GPS locations and fly back and land in the U.S. all by itself without risking a single American life. They should have them in our arsenal by 2015.

My objection is the notion that this generation is the last generation of pilots which I think is a very very premature assertion.

No, this isn't the last generation of pilots. The F-22 and the F-35 is going to be in service for a long time. Those are probably going to be the last generation of manned fixed wing combat aircraft. The pilots are going to be around for a while. But the thing is, you'll see the UAV take the missions of manned aircraft one by one.
Long range bombing is an obvious choice for the UAV because of the simple nature of the mission.

You just can't predict what a machine may do if it malfunctions. You can't trust machines like you can some people.