Electric throttle control isn't all that new.

Back in the early 60's (or maybe even late 50's) I worked in an engineering team (at a small electronics firm in SoCal) designing the electronic throttle control servo amplifiers for the North American (later Rockwell) B-70 Valkyrie. The B-70 was the first AF airplane to utilize a fly-by-wire throttle since, at Mach 3, the airplane grew several inches in length due to friction heating. Because of the change in length from the cockpit to the nacelles, mechanical controls just wouldn't work and hydraulic controllers drifted too much. The system had doubly redundant servo motors on each engine as well as the electronic controllers. I have no idea whether this type of system was ever used on later aircraft but it sure worked fine on the B-70.

The system worked so well that I flew the prototype controller to GE's engine plant in Ohio for installation in their engine test cell where they were developing the B-70's engines (J-97 if memory serves - but that's a long time ago. All I remember was that I could almost stand upright in the tail-cone of the thing). Up to then, GE used hydro controls in their test cells which couldn't hold test settings for long term runs. The electric motors in our system, with integral brakes, stayed locked in polition as long as they weren't energized so test settings stayed locked.

So, there's nothing new under the sun, I guess.

Incidentally, as a totally unrelated point of interest, the reason the B-70 had the cockpit so far out front was because the airplane originally was proposed to use nuclear engines and that long nose was intended to keep the crew as far from any radiation source as possible and provide space for shielding. At that time, the engines weren't developed and no one had a clue what the radiation levels might be. ( To my knowlege, GE never did get a satisfactory nuke engine developed, at least for the B-70 program, ergo the big J-97 and the advent of the electric throttle).

Dan Schaefer