What ‘situational awareness’ would a manned combat aircraft’s crew have – apart from looking out the window – that doesn’t come from the aircraft’s sensors in the first place? Data from those sensors can be sent to a pilot in a ground station somewhere safe, rather than a guy sitting in the plane at serious risk.
Sounds nice in theory, especially when your only current martial occupation involves asymmetric warfare with rural folks in the middle east.
As i.e. mentioned, the security of that datalink is not going to be guaranteed against an equally advanced enemy with the wits and equipment necessary to mess it all up (just as you would be able to screw with theirs).
Your entire future scenario is predicated on the indefinite maintenance of asymmetric warfare and the hope that you never face an enemy with technological capabilities similar to your own.
This sounds a bit riskier that I’d personally like. Unless you can find a way to completely eliminate that risk and guarantee your own supremacy into perpetuity, I’d wager that it would be wise to have at least a few manned aircraft in any future fleet. I wouldn’t want a wily opponent to come out of nowhere and render my air force entirely useless.
As for the whole safety bit, I’d be careful there as well. War is inherently dangerous. Safety is rarely ever one of its features. Mitigating said danger is a noble goal, but at some point risk is going to be inevitable. Try to cross that line by making safety a priority as you engage in an inherently unsafe but necessary activity(war) and you risk jeopardizing your ability to win a conflict (ex. rendering yourself unprepared for symmetric warfare).
Granted, all of this is my conjecture, but take it as you will. Just my two cents.
Unmanned aircraft have already taken over most of the ISR roles. The cost/risk/benefit analysis for strike missions in high-threat environments is already heavily in favour of unmanned assets. In the future, the only significant manned combat aircraft requirement will be for air defence/policing, insofar as visual ID is required.
Time will tell.
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