Let me ask you a very simple question, does your computer do exactly what it is supposed to every time you use it? It must not need you then!
Autopilots are computers and someone has to control and operate them. They are to assist the pilot not replace the pilot. Most of the time pilots take off and land the aircraft, the AP is used enroute to allow pilots to monitor other critical to flight systems. Trust me an autopilot would nor could NOT land an aircraft on the Hudson River!

PS , even drones have a pilot, he just isn't in the plane!

There's a program on tv in the uk at the moment about Susi Air in Indonesia and you can manually fly Pilatus Porters into the very small hill airports in the many islands there, hopefully not joining those who found a mountain or bad weather and are no longer with us.

And you are not "doing nothing at all", you are responsible for the safety of a a few hundred people and a multi-million dollar machine. If you had to hand fly a B747 for 9 hours you'd soon appreciate the benefits of the autopilot, as, I expect, would the passengers.

Learn to consult the Federal Aviation Regulations. All the particulars of pilot certification is found under part 61. It is excerpted here on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_certi...

You can have the rating at 17 on a PPL, however, the likelihood of having the hours to gain other ratings, such as an instrument rating, necessary to effectively fly one are fairly slim at that age.

Assuming you started logging hours as soon as you got a Student Licence and trained full time, my best guess is that it would take 18 months of training to get that rating, certainly at the kind of level that someone would actually let you fly one as a solo or command pilot.

It is not that they are hard to fly, they are not, but the insurance company would probably have a fairly jaundiced view of a 17 year old, of any experience, flying a multi-million dollar high performance jet.

However, for a young guy, any jet time is good time so if your question is not hypothetical and you actually had the chance to do this at any age you would certainly be wise to take the opportunity.

What kind of engineer? A mechanical design engineer, aerospace engineer, electrical engineer, nearly all make more out of school than any pilot! (By engineer I mean a full 4 year Batchelor degreed engineer, not a tech school associate.)

A pilot may pass them after 25 years or so but in the mean time most engineers have earned more during their career.

If you are asking about a "maintenance engineer"/ mechanic then no, the pilot will usually pass the pay within a few years. These days anyone who wants to be a pilot for the money ... Is an idiot! You become a pilot because you love to fly!

"Warbird Pilot" has it right. Old "retired" aircraft are modified to fly by radio control and used for testing missiles and the like. There's likely some footage on YouTube of an F-14 "Tomcat" shooting down 6 drones at the same time.

As for drones being "too expensive" - remember theses are "your tax dollars at work". When a plane is "obsolete" and taken out of service - they have to do *something* with it, and using it to test new missiles is a worthy enough cost to justify destroying an expensive piece of hardware.