Are there any plans to make the QF-16 into a drone for actual combat missions, or a fully autonomous fighter?
There seems to be some ongoing research into just that:


  There is an effort underway to develop a UAV version of the F-16. This would be based on the QF-16, the remotely controlled target version of the F-16. The air force is already in the process of converting 210 retired F-16s to QF-16s and it was noted that with a little extra work the QF-16 could be turned into a combat UAV for dangerous missions like SEAD (suppression of enemy defenses) or attacking ground targets guarded by heavy air defenses.


Other research is often related to sixth generation fighters, which are often described as being "optionally manned" meaning that they can fly with or without a crew onboard. 

F-16s currently being converted into QF-16s are older models which are likely to require more maintenance per flight hour, and as always it is a matter of capability vs cost vs other platforms. The biggest question for such a conversion is whether or not an imagined MQ-16 would bring capabilities not already covered by existing UAVs to the table, and how expensive it would be to support this.