It comes down to this: America doesn’t waste its people.
Pilots are people, they’re valuable. If you’re going to send them up, do so in such a way that they win and win and win and come home safe.
Ideally, air combat with live pilots will end within the next seven years.
Exactly. In a fair fight there is always the chance that you’ll be the unlucky one that day. In an unfair fight it is basically clubbing baby seals. Even with the latest Eagle (be it the K, the SG with AESA, or the Silent E) it is more of a fair fight against the very latest foreign analogues. With the Raptor it becomes a very unfair and unfriendly fight. As for UCAVs - I don’t know whether it will be 7 years from now, but it is the future (at the very least a mix of manned with unmanned). Also, with cases like the stealthy Blackhawk used during the Osama raid coming from nowhere, plus stories of F-35 AESA jamming the F-22’s AESA, it makes one wonder what is available (or in the developmental stages) that we do not know about. Even though that Blackhawk was not really high stealth or even that special, the very fact that it existed means that black projects are still around.
Untilled a first tier enemy learns how to jammed drones. Then it’s pilots in the cockpit again.