Fair enough. I think anything short of a ballistic missile against a “near peer” IS outdated tech at this point, but doing rough napkin math gives about an hour from launch to impact. I still suspect the f-16s were more about anti-drone operations but, reasonable.
I think human operators are more to prevent shooting down non-combatant aircraft like commercial airline and civilian planes neither of which are broadcasting Friend or Foe signals to air defense operators.
That is the on paper reason. I would take a look at how much friendly fire we and our allies have done and… yeah, it is liability and being able to say a human is involved for the purposes of an audit/