What sort of stories? I'm interested.
ML/NJ
The hull losses related to human error... the FTS bringing down one, the bad taxi speed entry, poor decisions from the ground operator for a number of crashes in the field. 4 of the first seven were lost to non-combat related human errors or faulty decision processes. The global hawk is one of the MOST automated UAVs and the human error rates are seemingly high and of great consequence. Of course these are extreme, and are largely growing pains, but nonetheless concerning. The lifespan of commercial aircraft is roughly 30 years in average service... half of the existing commercial fleet will still be in service in 2025. Retrofitting old aircraft with new systems is EXPENSIVE... imagine the cost of retrofitting them for remote control. Heck, even existing flight deck automation systems are so diverse that they are causing headaches in implementing the current improvements. Give three different flight crews the exact same clearance (e.g. descend and maintain flight level eight-zero) and you are likely to get three different results... one aircraft may descend at 3 degree flight path angle and slow to 250 kts in descent before crossing 10,000ft... the second may maintain descent speed to 10,000, level off and resume descent once the speed is reduced to 250 kts, the third may do something in between, reducing the FPA to help bleed off the speed, but not completely level off. There are no real standards in FMS operation, and the thought of automating everything should scare the hell out of you. Having said that, there will NEED to be some improvements to the system that will automate the more mundane tasks if traffic is to exceed the pre 2k levels by any significant amount (not really sure that it will any time soon though... currently looks like 2020 or later before we hit pre-2000 traffic levels).