I was talking about the whole 'a pilot sacrifices herself as a decoy target certain to die' angle not in having pilots for a regularly scheduled flight, my thinking was like this:Arioch wrote:As in today's commercial aircraft (which are flown almost entirely by autopilot), the pilots are there for when things go wrong. Trusting the lives of important passengers to the vagaries of AI decision making would be truly "beyond stupid."dragoongfa wrote:Autopilot is a thing, wasting two trained pilots in a job that can be done by a machine is beyond stupid.
There is no need to have a pilot aboard to do that, especially if the shuttle is terminally low on fuel at the first place.
Once the VIP is delivered and the shuttle has served its use then its next use could certainly be a decoy, launching it and sending it away from the VIP as a decoy target is the natural reaction but with the limited amount of fuel there is no room for fancy maneuvers at the first place.
If the shuttle is to serve as a decoy it would have to be plausible that someone important is still onboard and that someone has taken a route to safety away from the incoming hostiles. Launching the shuttle towards a safe haven at maximum acceleration and away from an incoming force is the only way to make it a plausible decoy, a commander wouldn't waste time and resources in an active battlefield to catch and capture/destroy the shuttle if they don't believe that someone important enough is aboard.
Having the shuttle broadcast calls for help from a 'high ranking' officer as it speeds away from the enemy should be enough in order to trick the Umiak commander to divert some of their units on it. This doesn't require someone to be aboard the shuttle to happen, Tempo could make a couple of recordings for this. First the call for help and then a 'final broadcast' requesting pickup due to engine trouble as the shuttle runs out of fuel and continues moving on momentum alone.
At no point do I see a plausible reason as to why a pilot is needed for a decoy, the autopilot should be more than able to handle the simple navigation solution of a long burst away from the enemy and then the onboard computer could handle the necessary broadcasts after they were recorded.