I would think a plane could be lighter and react and maneuver more rapidly, pull more Gs, if there was no human inside.
We don't even know that there was a pilot. All we know is that a jet aircraft was produced in a fairly rapid timeframe.
For highly fluid, continuously changing environments? Yes. Humans are much more adaptable than computers.
That having been said: there is a YouTube video of a test pilot talking to some folks at MIT(?) and saying that the F35 is basically the future of piloting in that you don't "fly" the plane so much as tell the plane "do action X" and the plane figures out how to do it. So, the next generation of planes are going to be even more of this--effectively a human pilot in theatre commanding a drone swarm.
> I would think a plane could be lighter and react and maneuver more rapidly, pull more Gs, if there was no human inside.
Absolutely. And lots of these will be commanded from a bunker somewhere. The number of these commanded from a pilot in theatre is going to get smaller and smaller.
Although I’m not aware of autonomous systems which shoots something with people onboard. But I disagree the characterization of these systems as “top of the food chain”. This naming would provide food for philosophers, but practically this definition is useless.
A real drone bomber is a cruise missile