Being cheaper means you can have more of them, which then could mean you don't even need to worry about the expensive stealth features. So what if the enemy detects one and shoots it down? The four other drones can carry on with the mission.
The days when manned bombers played any role in the first strike against an capable foe ended decades ago, today's fighters are used when you need on the spot decision making whether it is to interdict errant civilian planes or provide close air support to infantry.
What about autonomous drones? Can't you have AI piloted drones with ML models trained on thousands of hours of combat missions, where you just punch in the mission objective and the acceptable outcome/casualty levels, and it can decide for itself how to carry it out if communication is lost?
That feels terrifying but it does sound like where the future is going.
The problem is that the missions flown requires a lot more judgement then modern machine learning is capable of providing, or that we are likely to entrust solely to an computer anytime soon.
Yes the skynet scenario is increasingly likely but it's also something military planners are aware of especially doing periods of diplomatic tensions like the ones we are under now where you really don't want an trigger happy automated defence system in charge of fully armed missiles.
There is also the issue that all we know is that the next war will have it's own entirely new politically defined strategic constraints, where the most effective tactical strategy is might be blocked out due to long term diplomatic/political consequences.
I am nowhere near an expert on this subject, but it seems to me that drones could be very resistant to ground-based jamming. All their antennas and communications can be above the plane, perhaps relayed via another drone or aircraft flying very high overhead.
I have zero military experience but I have two thoughts:
1. Military leaders are resistant to change. From what I've read, the establishment of the US Air Force as its own branch was highly resisted by leadership.
2. I'm not sure if this covers all the bases. I'd imagine new technologies like drones would complement, not replace existing manual(?) fighter jets. What if they have larger payloads? We'd need time to make them smaller, no? Perhaps there is a limit to how small a "conventional" weapon can get and you can't just nuke everything and everyone and hope nobody fights back?
Just thinking out loud.
Fundamentally almost no one reading this (myself included) knows jack shit about the actual performance of the F-35 in combat, how good drone technology is etc.
OTH combining human-piloted planes with cheap "companion drones" for scouting, distraction and as weapon carriers sounds much more useful.
If you want a more autonomous system I'm not sure there's even a way forward for that at this moment (i.e. if you want to fly in civilian airspace). Airspace is much more heavily regulated than e.g. carspace where companies are allowed to put pretty much anything on the road.
Why did they stop shooting?