UAVs are great against opponents with limited electronic warfare capabilities, but wouldn't they lack credibility against China or Russia? They'd simply jam them and that'd be that, yes?
Blocking the entire RF spectrum all at the same time is possible, but unbelievably difficult. When you're hopping a random # of MHZ every few dozen microseconds, it is super tricky.
I guess that was what was behind the story of insurgents grabbing drone video feeds.
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126102247889095011
As I understand it, that's so you can show them to anyone quickly; if encrypted, various security issues are invoked.
It was considered to be an acceptable trade off because the greater part of their usefulness is so ephemeral. On the other hand, an adversary who routinely monitors them could figure out a lot of things about our general methods.
