Take a look at how many highly paid support technicians and equipment it takes to operate the Northrop Grumman Triton, or for that matter the plain old General Atomics family, Predator, etc., even discounting military specific hardware.
The dollars/flt hour will make your eyes bleed, and the Triton is currently the closest thing to autonomous operation levels that the airlines will need. All about how and where you do the required information processing, on or off board.
Two pilots/aircraft, minuscule cost compared to current autonomous operations, and nobody sees it getting any cheaper.
Thats one of the reasons autonomous military aircraft have fallen off the radar so to speak, less manpower/footprint is the groupthink right now.
A few demo sideshow programs will run, my bet is they peter out. Company’s like to sell what they demo, if not, it’s on to something else.
But I could be wrong.