I'm not talking about a computer flying a fighter jet. That belongs in the realm of science-fiction for the foreseeable future.
I'm talking about a guy on the ground flying a UAV. You'd still have all the advantages of a human at the controls without any of the disadvantages (susceptibility to g-forces etc.). Wouldn't such a set-up be advantageous?
No.
How will a computer transmit stall buffet in a way that tells the man on the ground that he can maintain stick pressure for only three more seconds instead of five? You cant write software to tell you what I can feel in my ass cheeks at 270kts trying to pull lead out of reversing barrel roll that tells me how far I am from corner speed.
Even if you could, how quickly does that information get transimitted back to the man on the ground. It could never be fast enough. Never. G-forces, buffeting, yaw, AOA, even sounds are clues to what is happening around you when you cant take your eyes off the enemy.
I suppose you could transmit the HUD back to someone on the ground in realtime, but you cant transmit back the feeling in the stick of mushyness that comes when there is not enough air coming over the controls, though in FBW aircraft thats gone already. Defense contractors have had to put back artificial "feel" in the stick because pilots rely on it to tell them things that their eyes cant.
Consider all the ways that you might box with a robot. There could be no robot fast enough to anticipate your kicking it in the balls in time to do anything about it. Even if it was able to block you, what could it do about someone pulling it's plug?