Sorry, I’d rather see a plane get busted on a computer before we put a highly trained pilot’s life at risk. We might need those guys to fight a war or something.
A whole lot of the problems that need to be solved can’t be solved in the air anyhow. You can’t fly then fix a fly-by-wire system because you can’t fly it in the first place.
But when I look at what Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works did with the YF-12, I have to question our current procurement process. They INVENTED the materials and processes to build it. It still holds world records.
/johnny