I know that many are making jokes about this but one of the things that jumps out at me is that the auto pilot was engaged when the actual pilot ejected. In the old days an auto pilot basically just held a steady course. Then came the auto pilots that could automatically change course and make course corrections. There were even some auto pilots that could handle take off and landing.
When I was in the Army about a quarter century ago I got to spend a bit of time out at White Sands Missle Base. They were experimenting with Drone technology, which was basically next generation auto pilot with much better AI technology. They had a craft there that lived in the corner of the hanger. They could give it some basic instructions and it was able to taxi itself out of the hanger to the runway, take off, fly in a preset flight path then return to base, land and taxi itself back to its designated spot; all without any additional input from a human.
The guy who was telling me about this also mentioned that it could automatically deploy various counter measures and evasive maneuvers if someone tried to shoot it down. This was useful information because one of the projects they were working on was to convert old F16 fighters into drones for target practice. The jets could be controlled manually by a remote pilot or put into an autonomous mode. I can only imagine what kind of advancements have been made since then but I'm pretty sure something like an F35 would have the most advanced versions available.
So while other are laughing about incompetent military/government I'm thinking about this:
www.nbcnews.com
see, this is another example of putting the cart before horse. building something invisible without the means to find it once its evacuated...... wonder woman never lost her plane, the klingons never lost their ship when cloaked......we need an app on their smartwatch, "find my plane".....or maybe a fob button that blows the horn........hmmmmm
arstechnica.com
