I don't think we agree on what "autonomous" means. Preprogramming a flight path to follow doesn't meet the definition of autonomous nor does autopilot following

I don't think we agree on what "autonomous" means. Preprogramming a flight path to follow doesn't meet the definition of autonomous nor does autopilot following waypoints. Autonomous, at least to me, means the drone takes off, searches out a sight ("drone, fine me a bridge and take pictures of it") and then makes the decision to fly to it and perform some kind of action whether it be photographic/videographic/some kind of monitoring (commercial drones) or a kinetic action (military drones). Basically, when drones get AI then I'd personally consider them to be autonomous. YMMV