Seeing as the US military has been crying out (for 20 years now) of their shortage of fighter pilots, then this could generally be considered as happening. It'

Seeing as the US military has been crying out (for 20 years now) of their shortage of fighter pilots, then this could generally be considered as happening. It's a situation that could have been far more easily handled in the late 90's, but is now being "handled" by attempting to reduce the training latency (not viable and quite unwise, IMO, but happening regardless) and by reducing the staff billets demanding fighter pilot backgrounds. Technology will indeed replace (and has been) much of the need to put a highly trained human on the bleeding edge. That doesn't obviate the current significant under-staffing.