Communications keeps being the problem with drone fighters. And situational awareness has always been the problem with air combat in general.
Maybe the next military aircraft project should be a drone AWACS? Design a radar/comms package that can be mass produced at low unit cost, and a drone to carry it, and spam enough of them over the battlefield that if a few of them get shot down, the rest will still maintain surveillance and network coverage. There may be little experience with autonomous fighter planes, but there is plenty of experience with autonomous network nodes.
Maybe the next military aircraft project should be a drone AWACS? Design a radar/comms package that can be mass produced at low unit cost, and a drone to carry it, and spam enough of them over the battlefield that if a few of them get shot down, the rest will still maintain surveillance and network coverage. There may be little experience with autonomous fighter planes, but there is plenty of experience with autonomous network nodes.