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A lot of members weighed in on this topic in another thread- and because it was off-topic, I have decided to create a specific thread on the subject. The military is making great use of drones, and of course someone on the ground has to fly the drone, but that person is NOT on the aircraft. Several questions come to mind - and it seems problematic that any government oversight agency is going to cave in on drone ops in a CIVILIAN commercial aircraft anytime soon for a number of reasons. An Avsim member has commented that most commercial crashes are PILOT ERROR, which argues in FAVOR of drone ops. OTOH, I have a hard time envisioning a DRONE PILOT being able to handle sudden and unexpected in-flight emergencies "in time". Unlike flying a sim, the drone pilot is commanding a ship with REAL human lives at stake. Since that drone pilot is NOT ABOARD the plane, one could argue he or she is not truly INVESTED in a 100% safe outcome record. Others may postulate that COMPUTERS would control this brave new world of flight, obviating the need for human pilots, even on the ground. The immediate question arises, is "FAIL-SAFE" an oxymoron? Arguably, no computer system known is 100% uptime with no failures of any kind. In addition, ambient warning sounds heard in the cockpit are unlikely to be heard on the ground. Other tell-tale handling and performance problems that occur in flight may be undetectable by the BIG BROTHER SYSTEM on the ground, or if they ARE detectable, a bad outcome may already be unpreventable by the time the minor sounds become severely loud. For these and a host of other reasons, it still seems clear that there is no substitute for the men and women in the cockpit, notwithstanding the problems with the current system. The idea of 'two' pilots instead of just one is a way to attempt to deal with issues like substance abuse, depression and other forms of mental illness, distraction, health problems being hidden by the pilot, and so on. Of course we still have crashes, and no one has figured out a sure-fire way to deal with pilots who are simply flying off course (think civilian PPs) with no transponder, mixed in with poor weather and/or overloaded airspace. Then you have the weather, which alone is no small threat. I'd still take a pilot with a ton of military flight hours at the helm in lieu of an unseen mainframe on the ground, or a combination of the mainframe and a drone pilot on the ground, all day every day. There is no substitute for expertise, and courage. Just ask Sully Sullenberger. Hard to picture a 7-minute flight ending well post bird-strike with some guy at company headquarters flying the plane with a joystick. Or a computer. The computer can't look at the Hudson and pick a place to ditch. The number of what-ifs in flight are simply too many to be able to be programmed into some lines of code. The coders in our membership will probably nod their heads on that one. Your thoughts?