@ Tourist
Those who believe the technological challenges are insurmountable should ponder on this.
Various militaries in the world are testing autonomous UCAVs
These are unmanned, autonomous combat aircraft.
Autonomous X-47B Flies In Formation With Fighter Aircraft | Popular Science
These aircraft must find must take-off (from a carrier in this case) navigate, find and kill the enemy, navigate home and then land on.
No beacons, no radio control, no atc, no TCAS.
You should have thought about that before you posted the above, your optimistic reference to the military use of unmanned vehicles brought me into this discussion. If you want to go into detail to what reasons those UAv's had been lost, go ahead. For sure software and computers didn't make them safer, it only saves the sad duty to visit one more widow.
As I mentioned before, these drones the military is flying are not existent because the pilots are bad and the computers are better.