You just can't remotely pilot a fighter/bomber. You can't remotely pilot if you don't have an overwhelming air superiority. You can't remotely pilot if your adv

You just can't remotely pilot a fighter/bomber. You can't remotely pilot if you don't have an overwhelming air superiority. You can't remotely pilot if your adversary can deny you satellite connection (either through jamming or by destroying the satellite). Here are a few problems: - the lag. Aerial fight implies split-second decisions, many of which are matter of life and death. Sat link is way slower than that. - kiss your stealth goodbye. First, you need a radar-transparent dome and a satellite dish under that; it's hardly stealthy. Second, you need a downlink that can be detected in a large vicinity of its target - even if it's a "tight" beam, it's still kilometers across. Third, the uplink will still bleed some RF energy that can be detectable. Planes fly in a radio silence for a reason. - very low "sensor bandwidth". Fighter pilot constantly receives tons of data using almost all of their senses, while drone pilot only sees a grainy glitchy videostream. To put it in another way: F-35 is basically a multi-ton, hyper-technological shell for about a kilo of squishy brain mass. Unless we invent some form of undetectable, very-low-ping, multi-gigabit communication it will always be better to have that brain "locally" in an adversary environment.