Jamesdevice,
Oh, of course 'autonomous'; the new catch-all for those who believe manned aviation is over by Christmas and there'll be a surplus of pilot brevets sitting on a shelf somewhere in Stafford.
Who dials in the targets? Who has done the analysis on the targets in the first place? What happens when the targets move?
Do these automonous air vehicles have self loading fuel; weapons; mission data and engineering? Are the air vehicles just sent over the border to drone around (pun intended) and come back after 5 hours having decided how to react in the ever changing environment of a real battle space?
Warfare will always involve people in the loop when it comes to delivering violence to the enemy. We are many, many years, (if indeed a politician would ever allow), autonomous vehicles on land, sea or air being let loose to have a scrap.
The level of autonomy you suggest about may even remove the 3 crew from the console in Creech but I struggle to see how taking the biological mass out of the cockpit (or remote cockpit) will do what you initially suggested which was to reduce manpower.
The flying pay savings still stand though.