A method and apparatus for autonomous control of unmanned aircraft. A method includes, in a memory of a flight controller associated with an unmanned aircraft, identifying a target to be captured, the identifying comprising a plurality of target variables, identifying a type of the unmanned aircraft, selecting one or more capture routines, defining desired data parameters, and storing the plurality of target variables, the one or more capture routines and the desired data parameters in the memory as a flight path. A system includes a computing device having at least a processor, a memory and a display, the display including a graphical user interface (GUI), and an unmanned aircraft including at least a flight controller, a power supply, a propeller system, a landing gear system, a Global Positioning System (GPS) device, a camera system and a one or more sensors, the flight controller wirelessly linked to the computing device which provides flight path control information to the flight controller through the GUI.