From a simulation perspective, the Tank Crew part is probably much more behind than AI in BoX is.
Anyway.
The AI needs to receive an overhaul and as much as I understood Jason over at il2sturmovik.com, he and his devs are definitely aware of this.
And if I understood his explanations further on, they've got one core programmer only and that person isn't the most experience one when it comes to AI programming.
Time to summarize the issues you have:
AI overhaul requires you to turn the game's core logic inside out.
You've got one programmer with sufficient insight in the game's internal logic only.
But that one might not have sufficient insight to AI logic.
So you'll have to hire - at least - one more guy who is top notch in AI programming. Mind you these people don't grow on trees.
At the same time, you have to keep the ball rolling.
Your dev team needs to pay their debts as much as you have to.
AI overhaul will easily take half a year, or more.
When you start doing it, you can't stop anymore.
In the meantime, you can't work on other big projects, meaning: No progress on "early access" modules and no new modules at all.
Means: You could only start this task when all current "early access" modules have been finished.
And since you can only do little "teaser" projects in the meantime, like single collector planes being mostly outsourced to other partners, you have to make sure that at the starting point of this monster project, you have collected sufficient money to pay your team for 6+ months with seemingly no business.
That's where we are.
People put money in the game for new planes, new modules, new tanks.
No one comes around saying "oh yeah! now that you touch AI, I will decide to throw 200 bucks at you and jump on the train!". No one, ever.
Mike