Today do we still need high skilled pilotage?
Yes, what kind of a question is this? A test flight or two does not mean "AI" will be able to do a pilots job as good as they do, over and over again. Nothing about "AI" is intelligent other than its name ffs, we are years and years away from a pilot just sitting in the cockpit and giving orders while the plane flies itself and engage in combat. Air forces around the world aren't desperately looking for pilots because they just love seeing them in their uniforms, they are irreplaceable for the foreseeable future.
There is a reason militaries around the world are slow to adapt new tech and strategies, and it's not just because they are all hard headed. You need reliability almost more than anything else, everything you use has to be able to perform when it is needed and has to be able to do this after perhaps sitting on a shelf or in a hangar for long periods of time.
I can't fucking believe people talk about pilots as if they're expandable and easily replaceable. When Russia lost its jets in Ukraine, pilots were the loss that really hurt them, more than the jets. One of the main reasons Germans lost the air superiority in WWII was because they lost their best pilots and all the experience they gained. Talking so casually and callously about losing our pilots (and our soldiers in general as well) is fucking insane. Goal should be to minimize the losses no matter what, not see them as expandable and say "eh, its good if ejection seats fail %15 of the time.
