Human Pilots: Who Needs 'Em?. Uninhabited aerial vehicles, or UAVs, perform tasks that are dull, dirty or dangerous. Technology advances and Pentagon spending have them proliferating, but some doubt their safety over populated areas. [Wired News]
UAV technology has been developing for a long time now and it should be no surprise that computers can fly a plane, at least when the flying is routine.
In a former life I worked in a department at General Dynamics that developed flight control software for the F-16, the A-12 (never made it to production), what is now the F-22, and other military aircraft. All of these planes are fly-by-wire, meaning that the pilot tells the plane what he wants to do using rudder pedal, control stick, and throttle inputs, then the flight control software looks at the state of the plane's systems, various flight conditions, etc., and makes the actual control surface changes. The important point here being that the pilot is really only asking the plane to do something; the plane is keeping itself in the air and may contradict the pilot under certain extreme conditions.
The lack of absolute control is a little scary from a pilot's point of view, but the systems are very, very good at what they do. In fact, I've seen videos of planes that had more than 50% of a wing shot off, but the flight control system was able to compensate using available control surfaces to the point where the pilot was able to limp back to base for a safe landing.
Some commercial planes have similar systems in the form of fly-by-wire and auto-pilots. I once flew a 747 simulator and watched it land the plane and come to a full stop all on auto-pilot. Pretty damned cool, especially in a full motion simulator!
As well as flight control computers can fly a plane, they still lack one important ingredient: the skill, intuition, and flexibility provided by the computer behind the pilot's eyes. It's easy to make a computer deal with the laws of physics, but a little more difficult to program in the judgment needed to decide whether or not to drop a bomb in a crowded urban area (is that vehicle on the targeted bridge a military transport or a school bus?). UAVs have a great future in certain applications, but I don't think that pilots need to worry (yet).
10:09:00 AM 
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