I tell my students to be careful with sources of any kind. I also caution them about the kind of issue that is prone to myth and polemic. (I’d doubt that the subject of 'leading edge slats" would bring out hordes of net loonies. Indeed, it’s articles like that, which you would have never seen in a print encyclopedia, that are Wikipedia’s strength.) I tell them that myth and polemic are very easy to find on the net because it’s so much easier to “post” than manually write and distribute. I also tell them that Wikipedia, if correctly used, is a remarkable source and we are very lucky to have it. One might start to evaluate an article there the way one would evaluate an article in a peer-reviewed journal. See what sources are referenced and look at the bibliography. (For what it’s worth, I’ve found most Wikipedia entries on the Pacific War and Vietnam, the subjects I wrote about and know best, to be pretty good and very rarely irresponsible - even the ones that don’t reference my books.)
I get the idea of auto-deployment. I just would like to know what sort of gizmo was required to make it work. Military factoids can actually lead to interesting generalizations and they interest me. We all have our weaknesses.
Eric