[SEJeff]

Disclaimer: I was a Shadow 200 TUAV pilot in the US Army from 2001-2005, and yes, I spent a year in Iraq (OIF II circa 2003-2004) where I got 480+ combat flight hours.

You basically wrote the exact same comment I was about to write with striking similarity. For reference, this is a 18 year old me in the back of a Shadow GCS at Ft Huachuca, AZ, where all Shadow pilots are trained: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_control_station

The military never uses the word "drone", but prefers UAV aka Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, just as you mentioned. For what it is worth, this new navy thing isn't really that novel. The latest generation of Tomahawk cruise missiles do something very similar. You launch several of them into a battle theater and they circle around sending / receiving target information and telemetry between each other and the control stations. See: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/u-s-marines-can-now-call-in...