I don’t understand all the fuss about autonomy.
On the roads, autonomous vehicles have the potential to reduce the nearly 40,000 deaths caused annually by human error, yet deployments in cities like Washington and Boston continue to face delays driven by opposition from unions, local politicians, and now even Congress.
In the air, the case for autonomy may be even stronger.
Autonomous systems could take on some of the dullest, dirtiest, and most dangerous missions that pilots, including U.S. warfighters, face every day. Agricultural dusting, wildfire suppression, aerial refueling, combat search and rescue, and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) are just a few of the mission sets where autonomous systems could play a critical role. In many of these missions, autonomy isn’t about convenience. It’s about reducing risk, extending operational capability, and in some cases, saving lives.
That’s why autonomy should not be viewed as a replacement for pilots, but as the next evolution of aviation itself.
Aviation has always evolved alongside technology, from manual, analog flying to today’s highly connected and automated cockpit ecosystems. Modern aircraft already rely heavily on automation. On many commercial flights, pilots transition to sophisticated autopilot systems shortly after takeoff that manage much of the flight at cruising altitude.
Yet despite the technology advancements we’ve seen to date, there still remains a significant opportunity to further improve the safety, efficiency, and scalability of flight operations. Introducing autonomy into the cockpit is exactly how we seize that opportunity, but autonomy is not limited to solely defense applications. I think everyone would agree that our national security represents the highest stake proving ground for these technologies, but these advanced systems can be scaled across all form factors in aviation, from small drones to civil aircraft to the world’s largest planes.
The Autonomy Opportunity
That opportunity for autonomy is becoming increasingly important as both commercial aviation and national security operations grow more complex.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula recently noted that more than two-thirds of the entire U.S. Air Force fleet consists of aircraft designed before the internet existed. Yet the people flying them are being asked to execute highly networked, data-intensive 21st-century missions in increasingly contested environments.
Modern aviation has evolved to demand an extraordinary amount from the humans at the controls. The job description has expanded faster than any individual can comfortably absorb, particularly in high-pressure environments. The problem is no longer whether pilots are capable enough. It’s whether the human brain alone can continuously absorb the growing amount of information modern aviation demands in real time.
History is full of examples where crews became task-saturated not because they lacked skill, but because the operational environment demanded too much at once.
In combat aviation, fighter and ISR crews operating in dense threat environments often face crushing cognitive loads managing all aspects of flight but also rapidly evolving tactical pictures. The Air Force and Navy have spent enormous effort designing HOTAS controls, helmet cueing systems, sensor fusion, and autonomy aids for the exact reason that even the most capable pilots have finite cognitive bandwidth, a point underscored by the fact that the F-22, only began receiving a helmet mounted display in 2025 after decades without one. When workload spikes, mission effectiveness suffers first, but safety follows shortly after.
On the civil side, even one of the greatest examples of professional airmanship in history, US Airways Flight 1549, illustrates the limits of human cognitive bandwidth under extreme pressure. Captain Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles executed brilliantly after dual engine failure following a bird strike. But the aircraft’s ditch switch, designed to reduce flooding during a water landing, was widely reported as not being activated, almost certainly because the crew had only seconds to prioritize what mattered most.
That’s not criticism. It’s evidence that even elite crews have limits when everything happens simultaneously.
This is precisely where autonomy should fit.
The Path Forward
Pilots are still responsible for four core functions during every mission: aviate, navigate, communicate, and operate. The first three are foundational. “Aviate” keeps the aircraft safely in the sky. “Navigate” gets it where it needs to go. “Communicate” connects the aircraft to the world around it.
But “operate” is where the real mission value now lives, and where full stack autonomy can holistically provide value.
I first heard this expanded framework from an outstanding colleague and aerospace thinker, Dr. Aaron Gannon, when we worked together at GE Aerospace. The more I’ve worked across commercial aviation, defense, autonomy, and flight tests, the more convinced I’ve become that he was absolutely right.
“Operate” means managing sensors, weather radar, fuel balancing, environmental systems, cargo operations, electronic warfare suites, mission planning software, and increasingly complex streams of tactical and operational data. In military aviation, it can also mean identifying threats, coordinating with multiple assets simultaneously, and making high-stakes decisions in seconds.
The most useful way to think about autonomy is not as pilot replacement, but as intelligent workload distribution. Autonomy can absorb repetitive, lower-value, or cognitively demanding tasks so crews can focus on judgment, decision-making, and mission execution – the things humans still do best.
In many ways, autonomy is simply the continuation of a decades-long trend in aviation, which is technology to help crews stay ahead of the aircraft rather than constantly reacting to it.
And the implications extend far beyond aviation efficiency.
As geopolitical competition intensifies and adversaries rapidly scale autonomous systems of their own, autonomy increasingly becomes a national security imperative. The countries that successfully integrate trusted autonomous systems into defense operations will gain meaningful operational advantages. This is not because humans disappear from the equation, but because humans become more effective within it.
The future of aviation is not about removing pilots from the cockpit. It’s about giving them a new kind of crew member: one embedded within the aircraft itself. This crew member doesn’t get tired, it can’t have a bad day, and it will always have lower cortisol levels than any human.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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