As long as they don't carry weapons (what, a mosquito with a toxic dart?) they will always be subject to the whims of a manned service interested only in maintaining it's manned (union) job security as an ability to do so.
The emphasis on 'remote pilotage' and 'system of systems' hardening of the arteries into a structured infrastructure as much as doctrine is thus terrible news.
The reality of life is that we have long had the mass video memory and expert system recognition tools, along with sensor resolution (APY-8 Lynx can see 'pixel to pixel' resolutions of _4"_ from 15km, through clouds) to do what is called 'Coherent Change Detection' or snapshot to snapshot overlays of target areas which show any changes and then pass both the raw imagery and the synthesis 'grain' over a datalink. The latter, using microwave modems (APG-77 on the F-22 can pass a 170mb radar map in about 3 seconds) and the CDL X/Ka band architecture means that all the 'drone operator' has to do is look at the imagery from his shelter or bizjet lounge seat and grab another donut as he calls for strike air.
The key to understanding why this is dangerous (to manned air as well as the enemy) is that the original DARPA UDS (UCAV Demo System) was designed to exit-phase into the UOS (UCAV Operational System) back in 2006. About the time that the JSF was going from SDD to it's own production ramp decision with the CDR nominally passed and key Congressional seats suitably contract passifiered.
Along about 2002, the USAF got DOD to dump DARPA and 'institute' them as the primary program authority on the followon JUCAS which was no longer light strike, fit 20 in a C-17 and go to a theater, type system. But rather an all doing design that was about 40% larger with consequential increases in baseline and operating costs. Shifting from a Garret engine to a GE F404 for instance brought the fuel load up to about 14,000lbs from 9,000lbs.
Yet the real crime was that, as soon as JSF was 'secure' (read they lied at every level to cover up massive program overruns and unready technology such as the CBO/GAO had been stating was too-concurrent likely since 1997...), the existence of the Iraq boondoggle gave them an excuse to cancel JUCAS altogether.
And this is why all of the above is so wrong:
1. UAV, even A-UAV cannot fly in bad weather. Most of the accidents involving them have in fact been due to turbulence and icing in the mission area or windshear in the landing one.
2. UAV, even 170kt Predator B, cannot rapidly flow into a give mission area or shift between them. Hence a 24 or even 32 hour endurance must be measured in the distance back to base at 110 knot cruise.
3. Back when the UCAV wasn't a bloated monstrosity, stuffed with 'value' that the USAF would rather give a pilot, it could go out 1,100nm and sit there for 2hrs. The F-35, with TWICE the fuel, can only go about 700nm and then spend perhaps 20 minutes in the target terminal area.
4. The F-35 has no more offensive bombload options in the stealth mode than a UCAV. Which is to say 8 GBU-39 (though you could easily get by with half this amount).
5. Pilots _hate_ 'NTISR' or Non Traditional ISR because it amounts to flying up and down roads looking at soda straw FLIR images of vague behavioral uncertainty rather than charging about shooting down what is up and blowing up what is down as part of the general fun of laying waste to a fixed target matrix. As a result, you have $5,500.00/hr F-16/A-10s and $14,000.00/hr F-15E tooling around for 4-6hrs before they have to come home. This in turn means you have to maintain four or eight ship (section doctrine) aircraft plus a red ball backup for every 'ISR' (with guns, aka road recce) orbit you maintain in a 24:7:365 mission environment.
6. The best cheap-fighter on the international market at the moment is the JAS-39 at around $2,500.00/hr. If a UCAV could match that while sustaining perhaps 2 aircraft per day, thanks to it's monumental advantages in endurance, you would be tenthing the operational costs involved.
7. The one good thing JUCAS/JSF fight did was put the Navy in a bad way. Around about 2001, they signed a future tactical airpower agreement with the USMC which basically made the latter the Reserve Force for the emergency task '7 carriers in 7 days' surge option that was so badly blown on 9/11. The problem being that both services also drastically reduced their total commitment down to around 200-250 aircraft and despite all the 'no reductions in requirements' those numbers haven't changed. This in turn has made the low cost F-16 replacement (which the JSF was originally 'CALF'd as being) for the USAF more of a Vark than a Viper. Add to this the utter incompatibility of STOVL with conventional carriers (the USMC's exit clause to their jointification contract will come when they have no more Hornet-C to fly off big decks) and the sheer cost of the B/C models and the USN needs to have a cheap bomb truck, real bad. The UCAV-N can do this because it is designed to. But what isn't mentioned is that the UCAV-C also came in a UCAV-CN format which could have just as easily become the 'standardized' variant overall. If you really want to shrink the force structure sizes to a common, readily deployable, don't make a joke out of things like common training pipes. Go to a common _basing mode_ for your jets. This is particularly of value when the USAF cannot base in to a given region and the USN cannot push enough jets off the pointy end (airwing compliments of 40 aircraft on a Nimitz class ship are an insult to intelligence) to make the Myth Of Carrier Airpower come true.
8. In the ops area, there is no need for a manned operator of the airframe itself because the essence of the design is to designate points or routes of interest as sensor or CEP localizations and then 'fly the autopilot' into the airspace. In a real war, SEAD and glide munitions ensure that the bombs will fly further than the threat sensors can track them (GBU-39 has flown as much as 57nm to hit a barge target within 17" of center). In a followon, pacification, effort, there is no need for heavy fires so much as preemptive ones. You see the ambush being set up as either a 'road crew' burning a tire to melt the asphalt. Or a company deployment of forces which set up a crossfire at a traffic choke, and the FIRST bomb delivered on their heads is also the LAST one before they start running like cockroaches before the flashlight. Manned operation, whether remote or on-airframe, is based on the assumption that the aircraft in question requires a human touch to survive penetration. Or to coordinate with a friendly ground presence. And this is simply not what experience has shown to be the case. Lag keeps the system from yanking and banking (as does Low Signature state) effectively. And if you are 20hrs as much as miles ahead of a vehicle column transport route, you don't need to play fast ambulance to save them.
ARGUMENT:
MAV will happen. It's unfortunate yet true. We should not hurry this intrusive process along any quicker than we have to because it can only be a negative effect aimed at our own national levels of privacy and freedom of speech and thought more than that of any 'hostile indigenous population' in a backwater state.
What will define the 'unmanned' systems state of present drones however; driving them to separate from 'remotely piloted' systems is the within-mission-set need and tactical ability to cover, autonomously, large regions of empty space (rather like ASW) sanitizing it with an immediate weaponized followon strike option for discovered threats. An option that does not require a hot pad QRA launch and 'Pizza Hut' delivery lag to bring a manned finger on the button to the effected target area. Because sensor resolution and threat floor equivalencies will be the same between platforms.
Such a system, when it finds an object of interest, will be 'flown' with signature model (ground threat WEZ bubbles) and sensor LOS graze/resolution fixes in mind, using a top down map type display and portalled sensor FOR windows that any teenager with Windows experience can manage.
It will NOT be vulnerable to the USAF 'Our Predator video is unencrypted because we're cheap like that!' exploitation or spoofing because CDL which is _essential_ for ALL 21st century air operations, will use directional, high power, high rate, wide-pipe technology to send snapshots as much as continuous feed. Snapshots which are made on the basis of CCD technology and mass video memory inherited from the JRO's developments over the decades.
None of which is properly covered in the docudrama.
In essence then, what you were told here was a confidence trick act of fraud by manned services terrified of being outmoded, much as the civilian world has been, by automation. And using all their powers of deception and 'honor' to ensure that officers support officers, at least in the highest-end driver (USAF) of the technology.
Here is how the USAF really feels about things like Predator-
UAV Eulogy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8-kNPKNCtg
And here is the image they sell to each other and the world-
Warrior Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTs6a0ORdQU&feature=related
CONCLUSION:
The main difference of which is about 326 billion vs. 70 billion dollars in wasted JSF vs. UCAV lifecycle costs. Intrusion on the thoughts of change as much as the act of violence and the loss of important controls over oil resources as manned airpower fails to support ground troops and a misguided press sees a parade of cripples and body bags as an excuse to sabotage a necessary war effort. Not because war never solves anything (ask Napoleon or the Dodo) but because the institutional culture is itself the greatest holdback on the development of warfighting technologies which do accomplish the mission.
Perhaps the greatest sadness here is that 'Terminators' are vastly more advanced than a UAV has to be. Thus 'Vago' is inspiring the conspiracy of dissociative delusion from the opening comments. Airplanes don't open doors. They don't trip over cracks in the pavement. They don't need to negotiate with or differentiate between collateral intelligence sources and active threats. They can deal simply, with the action of hostility itself.
GLAR