[ipeev]

I misread “uncrewed” as “unscrewed” and for a moment this became a much stranger, better aerospace story. Not autonomous aircraft, but aircraft apparently liberated from screws. A future of pilotless aircraft is plausible enough; a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder.

[dotancohen]

Much of the aircraft is rivets, not screws.

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/6312/why-are-ai...

"Airplanes are riveted, not screwed because they are the product of engineers, not lawyers."

[alephnerd]

> a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder

This is actually an important part of what makes a stealth airframe "stealthy", along with other stuff.

[Gravityloss]

Not as weird as one might think, fasteners produce local loads and require holes, so designing without them would be much better. It has been a goal for decades but progress is slow! Maybe uncrewed vehicles can be iterated on more rapidly.