> Our plane technology is quite useless in such a situation (and considering that alpha centauri is 5 light years away and aliens likely use the same physics 10 years is quite unlikely ;) )

You don't know, anything that would preemptively help to save human lives should be considered. Sending unmanned fighters or drones to probe a spaceship and gather data is wiser than sending humans to the task.

> Often times the combination of human instinct and machine capability is still the best for many tasks.

Sure. For how long tho. Also, when you fly a plane at twice the sound speed with a screen in front of you, you are already inside like a total simulated environment, your only human instinct used here is your survival instinct, which will, conveniently, save a multi-million dollars plane from being destroyed.

> Sure. For how long tho. Also, when you fly a plane at twice the sound speed with a screen in front of you, you are already inside like a total simulated environment,

It's also not the speed one collects detailed intelligence in, which was the subject.