> without making any substantial change to civil (non-military) aviation. Having known a bunch of aerospace people: this is in the works, it's just that we won

> without making any substantial change to civil (non-military) aviation. Having known a bunch of aerospace people: this is in the works, it's just that we won't see it come out for a while because civil aero moves really slowly in an attempt to guarantee safety. Not "high probability of safety", not "we're pretty damn sure", guarantee. The levels of paranoia and conservative use of technology they get to are unbelievable. It's been roughly one military design generation, and only half a civilian generation, since the 1998-2000 crop of X-Planes. The military just got done deploying the delta-winged and fully-autonomous fruits of the 1998-2000 crop of X-Planes, which means that civilian aerospace is going to start working on it in another two or three years, will have designs in ten, and will start selling in fifteen.