TIE fighters and the cost of protecting trained pilots

Are the Empire's TIE fighters simply poor aircraft with expendable pilots?

Dragon disputes the poor-fighter label, while the panel disagrees about whether imperial resources justify the risks imposed on trained pilots.

Dragon challenges the idea that the Empire's TIE series consists entirely of poor fighters and notes that some variants carry shields. He claims a TIE fighter would beat an X-wing in one-on-one combat ninety percent of the time because of the aircraft and its better-trained pilot. The challenge from another panelist concerns the value of protecting pilots after years of expensive training. A further defence invokes the Empire's enormous fictional resources as a reason it could absorb such losses, but that interpretation is disputed too. The exchange uses Star Wars to ask whether abundance justifies exposing skilled personnel to avoidable risks. Its claims about fighter performance belong to the fictional setting.