One of the coolest parts of Gunship Origins is going to be planning out missions.
You can just jump in the cockpit and lift off, head straight for the objective. It's not very smart, but you can do that.
Or, you can use up to 9 waypoints and a relief map to plan a route through valleys, sneaking up behind objectives, tankbusting while masking behind ridges, and RTBing before they even know you're there.