Are we becoming too dependant on blade control systems?

I am a Guardsman and have a Landscape Co that does a lot of final grading and ditch clearing and re-grading. We use a laser setup on the Mini-Excavator to grade check (eye mounted on the stick) and a Level-Best auto laser box blade for a skidsteer. The skills I have are from my career in the Army and Air National Guard. They make me the operator I am today. I believe it is VERY important to teach our up and coming troops how to truly operate and grade with out assistance from electronics. After perfection the ole' manual way then let them work with auto controls. My thoughts..

I saw this coming in 95 TDY to assist the 554 and we used the older laser fixed post system with the analog light displays for the Jolly Green rampconstruction at Osan. Unfortunately, the civilian industry s going this way too. I was fortunate in my combined Active and ANG career to have both feast and famine from no shortage of new equipment in the Snow Barn at Eielson and being in the 203 RHS and attached to the 554 RHS to the dearth of equipment in Guard shops and missions where I literally had to "borrow" equipment from civilians during Katrina and cobble together broken WRM stocks in Iraq and old army D-7's in Arkansas to clear forest for sniper training ranges . This gave me a helluva lot of problem solving experience. My first duty station in Eielson where the civilians almost equaled the GI's during th winter gave me some of the best trainers I could hope for. Now, we have kids that do not have that benefit and mission capability and readiness is consequently affected. I wish we could go back to the 80-and 90's expedient methods training mindset where we taught troops to think unconventionally when necessary.