In recent years we've seen autonomous flight make impressive strides to the point where the problem has shifted away from just making an aircraft that can fly without human supervision toward making them capable of operating safely in real-world airspaces alongside other aircraft and traffic control systems.

That being said, most autonomous systems have been confined to smaller aircraft, with the largest conversions involving small to medium planes like the Cessna 150 or the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. But the real future market is in heavy cargo aircraft like the Lockheed Martin Hercules.

According to Boeing, demand for large cargo aircraft is expected to grow considerably over the next decade, with 2,800 airframe builds and conversions projected over the next 20 years. The trouble is that there is a crisis-level pilot shortage raising the question of where the crews will come from for all these aircraft.