This is not different from fighting against an enemy with superior numbers of aircraft. Better pilots and better tactics can overcome superior numbers and superior aircraft any day of the week. I remember coming to TopGun with my shiny new VF-111 Tomcat thinking I was unbeatable, only to get slaughtered day in and day out by instructors flying A-4 and F-5 aircraft. No way were these planes superior to the F-14A, but because they knew their craft better than I did(at that time) they kicked my ass 8 ways from Sunday.
For every advantage an aircraft may have over others, it will be limited to the ability and knowledge of its pilot. It comes down to SA (situational awareness). You are never going to convince me that some kid sitting in a chair on the ground is going to understand what is going on around him better than the guy in the jet. No computer is ever going to be a superior solution in a fighter jet than a pair of eyes connected to a pilots brain.
You should not consider your comments to be disrespectful, that is not my take on it. This is not about me personally, but you should know that I am not a 'former' jet jock, I am in line again for a reserve slot having suffered through the Delta Airlines disaster. Don't put me out to pasture yet, son. Hell, I'm 45, not 60.
Back to your question:
A superior aircraft only gives you more effective options against an opponent. It wont save you from being an idiot in the air. Most of that superior ability just gets you more able to run away when you are about to get hosed. Better to live another day, learn something and come back, then to get your ass blown off by the guy you did not see.
I have no idea how I would clear behind me sitting in a chair on the ground. Would I trust a camera? I had a camera in the Tomcat, but the government wouldn't trust it most of the time either. So, you gonna put another camera in the tail? On the wings? Underneath and overhead? The Navy is going to risk their aircraft to a bunch of transistors? Not in my lifetime.
The general impression is that I am against these things coming, but I am not. I just know better. There are many many issues at stake before this can happen. ROE issues, tactical and strategic issues, not to mention technical issues such as cheap jammers turning your jet into a dumb little glider. I doubt some kid in a chair can acquire bearing on a SAM, beam it, avoid it, notice a line of tracers coming up and do something about it before he is looking at snow on his screen. It just aint gonna happen soon.
As for flying aircraft that exceed the limits of the human body, we have been doing that already for years. Even in the old Tomcat, it was never hard to put a RIO to sleep if he talked too much. The limits are at your controls. There is nothing mandatory telling me "I've got to pull 14G against this guy or I'm gonna get shot". The media made too much hype over GLOC, because they never mention that GLOC is a choice. A dumb choice. Pilots learn to evaluate their situations. If you cant win, LEAVE. If you cant leave, you screwed up and we will say nice things about you at your funeral. If I need 14G, I'll push a button and let a Sidewinder pull it for me.
So relax, dude. This isn't personal between you and me. I get pissed because some things I see are just untrue, not because they effect me. We need the F-22, because the enemy will have 5 times the number of aircraft that we will have, not because they will have aircraft just as good. Right now, the F-22 eats up 4 F-15s at a time. When the tactics get better, it will eat 6 Eagles for lunch. That is why we need it.
The command and control of a fleet of UCAV would be a complicated exercise in bandwidth management and re-tasking/re-targeting.
Can UCAV's be programmed to be that smart? Do we have enough UCAV "pilots" to fly a swarm of UCAV-like aircraft? Can we deconflict the airspace? How do you sell to the public and congress the idea that we want to buy a fleet of expensive UCAV's with the idea that you plan to lose many of them? Pilots at least can fly into a situation, get a grip on it, have "360 degree" situational awareness and decide to fly, fight, re-target, re-attack, not attack, whatever. They have this ability because they are there and they can think. UCAV's may be "there" but they can't think, and if controlled by a pilot then that pilot is operating with severely limited situational awareness and he will "die."
For pilots to be replaced we need Star Trek holo-deck technology that allows a UCAV pilot to fly in a reasonably situationally aware manner to ensure he stays alive when bullets and missiles start flying.
I would think that tanks would be a nice first step to develop unmanned weapons. It is a less complicated and less fluid environment, and less costly to build. Do it there first, validate the concept, technology and doctrine of employment, and then I think we may be onto something.
Can field battalions of unmanned tanks in a 2-d, 1-G, 25 knot ground battlefield?
No.
This means we can't even begin to handle unmanned aircraft in a 3-d, x-G, Mach aerospace environment.
Solve first the engineering problem for the relatively simple task of "flying" a tank. Then we will talk seriously about unmanned jets in a war environment.