In older game versions, when I was dealing with a CVBG, when I opened the Formation Editor, smaller air capable units (an FF with a LAMPS for example) would be listed in the units pane with their air assets listed as "Auto". CV air assets were just listed, and assigned sectors manually. Now I notice, the "Auto" notation no longer appears. Is this a change, or did I turn it off somehow? Using "Auto Formation Air Patrols" seems to have no effect.

While I've played most Harpoon versions, I can't remember the last time I saw what you describe (but I believe it was in the DOS versions, lost during the hop to Windows aka Harpoon Classic) so I bet that was a piece of functionality that was lost quite a few versions ago.

IIRC, the last time I saw this was the original Three-Sixty version of the game, when all you had was the GUIK game then the expansion packs. The option was "Auto Formation Air Patrols", which would automatically launch ASW resources in formation editor. Granted it has been a LONG time since then (think late 80s to early 90s) so I may not be remembering 100% correctly...