gamers worry about the latency of a wireless controller sending a signal from their couch to their TV.

for a fighter jet with a remote pilot, you're looking potentially hundreds of miles of range, and the latency of the video transmission to the pilot combined with the latency of the controls signal back to the plane. i can't imagine that being acceptable for any sort of dogfighting scenario.

Ironically, game controllers can have a latency of more than 20ms. Light travels more than 6000 km in a vacuum in 20ms. That's a pretty good excuse for gamers to complain about that sort of latency, I think.

Bluetooth is bad enough that videos have to be delayed so that audio can catch up. Completely worthless for games unless you use proprietary codecs like aptX.

I wouldn't say it's that bad, I flew a drone controlled via bluetooth with my phone, for instance.

Buffering audio is actually a great answer to disconnections. Plus, it's less energy-intensive to fill the buffers at once than to stream it as needed. And since it's pre-recorded anyway, you already have the whole buffer. Yes, initial transfer can take a while, though.

But in theory, the play/pause operations shouldn't have latency, and the bluetooth device could clearly communicate its state. I'm not sure how audio is actually implemented in the bluetooth stack, though, I've only ever done serial communication with it.

That's before taking into account enemy attempts to jam, spoof, or otherwise disrupt your control link.

Reliable comms is far from guaranteed in a war, and if there's a gen. 4 fighter dogfight involved, it presumably a median sophisticated adversary capable of EW.

Also opening up the ol' remote desktop port on an F16 is a major cyber risk.

AI scales better to how many jets you want to use. AI improvements can also instantaneously be rolled out to every jet. There is no need for continues live communication in "hot" combat. Less video leaks when they kill a bunch of civilians again.

Also think about the export market! Countries that now can buy the ruthless-pilot with the plane! And like with so many exports, you can give them a shittier version of the AI, so they do not become a danger to your forces!

Or just a version that can be hacked or revolted by giving them a signal. That is why chinese network equipment is so dangerous in national defence. You may not know the kill code. But then who will buy them.

remote control has a rather extreme weakness against advanced enemies.... jamming.