[fragmede]

It's not the expense of the pilot but the fact that the human pilot is subject to human biological constraints. Ie they black out after 9 Gs or so. An autonomous platform you'd want to design to be able to routinely do outside that envelope in a way that a platform designed for a human occupant is not.

[XorNot]

Its a nontrivial exercise to design a plane which can regularly do more Gs then that though.

There's no drones currently in development AFAIK with this goal either - the focus is on getting them to do useful mission without a pilot, rather then out dogfight or outmanoeuver missiles.

Basically the point stands: a hypothetical "better then F-35" drone is likely more, not less expensive then an F-35.

[throwaway85825]

The US lost several aircraft rescuing the downed pilot in Iran. Not necessary with drones.