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The batwing-shaped X-47B executed one of the hardest maneuvers in aviation, catching the arrested-landing gear on the deck of the USS George HW Bush off the mid-Atlantic coast, the navy announced Wednesday. Never before has a robot performed a feat executable only by the navy’s top pilots.

“Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren and mine will be reading about this historic event in their history books,” said Rear Admiral Mat Winter, the head of the navy’s drone programs.

The drone, followed by manned chase aircraft, flew from a Maryland airstrip on a pre-programmed flight path closely overseen by navy officials on land and on the deck of the Bush. It carried the call-sign Salty Dog 502. Once cleared by the landing signal officer, who had the distinction of being the first person to approve a robot for landing at sea, Salty Dog 502 put its hook down, caught the wire, and wrote a new chapter in naval history.

But that’s the problem, you see: There are no more pilots flying these planes. The real pilots have nearly all retired, leaving a bunch of “computer geeks” who have almost no flying skills and only know how to operate the computerized, automated flight equipment which is subject to catastrophic failure.

That’s what “Pilot X” told me in a phone interview. His identity is being secret for his own protection, but he recently retired from over two decades of flying Boeing’s largest aircraft for major U.S. airlines. He has received more actual flight time than 99% of today’s active commercial pilots, and he’s an expert in Boeing flight automation equipment. His testimony, below, reveals insider details that only a real commercial pilot would know.

“The bigger the plane, the worse the pilot,” he told me. “The airlines are trying to dumb down most of the entire fleet, and the pilots are losing all their flying skills. They don’t want pilots; they want computer geeks instead of someone who can actually fly. The stick-and-rudder skills go to hell in a hand basket when you don’t actually fly the plane.”

The SFO flight 214 accident was likely caused by the pilot relying on the auto-throttle, Pilot X explained to me. “There’s too much reliance on the auto-throttle. If you’re a real pilot, you can do much better than the auto-throttle by running the power yourself to stay in line with whatever approach you’re making.”

The other pilot on the flight deck was also partially responsible for failing to do his job, I was told:

“The non-flying pilot was not using CRM (crew resources management) where you call out the controls and altitude all the way down. They also had the glide slope switched off, and those two runways are too close together to be doing real close approaches.”

On Monday, Toronto police say, that multi-jurisdictional investigation culminated in the arrest of Benjamin Levin, a celebrated U of T education professor and highly regarded civil servant. The child pornography charges stunned colleagues in academic and political circles.

The father of three, who was named to Premier Kathleen Wynne’s transition team in January, will “vigorously defend” against the charges, lawyer Gerald Chan told reporters outside a North York courthouse Monday afternoon, following Levin’s arrest.

Investigators in New Zealand made contact with a suspect on an open online forum in January, said Jon Peacock, a senior inspector with a New Zealand internal affairs unit that specializes in online child-abuse investigations.

After several months of sporadic contact, the suspect sent “child abuse materials” to the investigator, Peacock said.

“As soon as that happened, we sent it to our colleagues at Toronto sex crimes,” he said.

Toronto police charged Levin, 61, with two counts of distributing child pornography and one count each of making child pornography, counselling to commit an indictable offence and agreeing to or arranging for a sexual offence against a child under 16.

Toronto police sources say the continued probe “overlaps” with investigations in New Zealand and England.

News of the arrest shocked associates in the academic and political communities between which Levin has split his professional life. He has been an educator, travelling the globe speaking on policy and research, and a public servant, appointed deputy minister for education in Manitoba and in Ontario, under former premier Dalton McGuinty.

Levin was named to Wynne’s transition team after she became leader of the Ontario Liberal Party in January.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

Obama mandated the program in an October 2011 executive order after Army Pfc. Bradley Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified computer network and gave them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group. The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in national security.

Under the program, which is being implemented with little public attention, security investigations can be launched when government employees showing “indicators of insider threat behavior” are reported by co-workers, according to previously undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. Investigations also can be triggered when “suspicious user behavior” is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to “insider threat personnel.”

The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the Freedom of Information Act.

An acknowledgement by Adm. William McRaven of his actions was quietly removed from the final version of an inspector general’s report published weeks ago. A spokesman for the admiral declined to comment. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary, said that the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has presidential authority to conduct covert operations.

“Documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director,” agency spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement. “Records of a CIA operation such as the (bin Laden) raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA Director, are CIA records.”

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison.

The Solar Impulse touched down at JFK at 11:09 p.m., completing the final leg of the cross-continental journey that started in California in early May. For Saturday’s final leg, the aircraft left Dulles International Airport a little before 5 a.m.

The flight plan for the revolutionary plane, powered by some 11,000 solar cells on its oversized wings, had called for it to pass the Statue of Liberty before landing early Sunday at New York. But an unexpected tear discovered on the left wing of the aircraft Saturday afternoon forced officials to scuttle the fly-by and proceed directly to JFK for a landing three hours earlier than scheduled.

Pilot Andre Borschberg trumpeted the milestone of a plane capable of flying during the day and night, powered by solar energy, crossing the U.S. without the use of fuel.

The carnage outside the Republican Guard building in Cairo — where toppled President Mohammed Morsi was first held last week — marked the single biggest death toll since massive protests forced Morsi’s government from power and brought in an interim civilian administration.