Just a nit, but aircraft/airport communications use AM not FM. This is deliberate, because FM's "capture effect" would mask other transmissions that inevitably occur when two parties randomly press PTT at the same time. With AM, you'll hear a tone, which is the difference frequency between the two transmitters, so you'll know that somebody missed something, and it will probably be repeated. If it were FM only, it would be less obvious that some communications were missed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_effect

Yeah I probably over reacted. But the knee jerk reactions I've seen to some perfectly reasonable systems just wear you down.

You raise good points but I would be very surprised to see digital data streams ever replace voice, and drone control is just a completely different problem. But as you say we'll see.