The X-47B in Flight Northrop Grumman The Navy's X-47B Will Be So Autonomous, You Can Steer It With Mouse Clicks -- Popular Science
To fly the military’s baddest, most technologically advanced planes, you once had to have what Tom Wolfe called “that righteous stuff,” the willingness to strap yourself to a jet-fuel laden machine and push it to the very limits of its mechanical capabilities. Nowadays, unmanned systems have taken the human danger out of some combat missions, though human pilots remain at the sticks.
But not for long. The Navy’s experimental X-47B combat system won’t be remotely piloted, but almost completely autonomous. Human involvement won’t be of the stick-and-rudder variety, but handled with simple mouse clicks.
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My Comment: The key is software, as revealed by this bit of information ....
.... reps from both Northrop Grumman (maker of the X-47B) and the Navy said the X-47B would be piloted not by human handlers in some steel box in Nevada, but by 3.4 million lines of software code.
Skynet, here we come.