Aviation started its fledging career as an observation platform (balloons American civil war? Or perhaps Chinese even earlier?). The obvious next step was to stop the opposition from utilising this platform (pistol at two wing spans graduating to more deadlier armament). At some stage someone thought of helping the boys in the mud and dropped “stuff” which became more refined if not overly accurate and could far outreach artillery. The whole military aviation expanded but the basics shifted from gaining intelligence ( particularly when satellites became more prominent) to delivering ordnance. The cry of we need S/A on site was justified until technology became so good whereby you now have more S/A looking inside than outside. Still the argument is there that we need a set of eyes there when the commercial airliner is not responding to see what is happening before we shot it down countered by your zoom lens’s will see more than the naked eye. It is inevitable that the human piloting bit will be removed from the aircraft and numerous other aspects of the military. It is just a matter of when.