War story time. Your post recalls a search in 1970, pre cell phone era. Two guys went hiking in the Santa Catalina range, just north of Tucson. One became ill and his companion went for help. After a week, the ill individual came out of the range, with no idea of where he had been, or how he had gotten out. His companion was nowhere to be found, evidently still in the mountains.

This launched a massive and long lasting search for the missing man. Background research indicated that the person was due for induction into the armed forces within two weeks of his disappearance. Although some of us more cynically inclined thought that our subject had probably reached Canada before the search even began, we continued for weeks. Years later, we would occasionally call out for Donald Lee Curtis, whenever searching in the Catalinas. The range is not as big as Alaska, but it is big, and precipitous enough to present a significant challenge to search efforts, especially with no point last seen.

Search strategy and tactics are well advanced from those early days...

Technology, is great when it works and very dangerous when it fails and we are relying on it.

True enough, and the key is not to "rely" upon any one mode, but to "utilize it, along with other techniques. When I was doing SAR, an area had not been exhaustively searched until a ground party had entered the area, a dog team had sniffed out the area, and a helicopter had flown over - at a minimum. Drone usage would just be another arrow in the quiver, combining characteristics of ground and aerial searching.