1) Does anyone think UAV can be a "Game Changer" in today's military? or, what criteria (imagination) we can put for it to be come one?
2) In Taiwan, people refer UAV to "Poor country's satellite". What do you think?
To the first one: I think so.Air/space reconnaissance is very important.Before the current high performance UAV, people using spyplanes, spy satellites to do such work.Compare to them UAVs are often smaller,cheaper,less depending on airfields conditions, more over they are expendable.Which means you can get closer and take a better look in a reconnaissance , or carry out more dangerous attack missions with UAVs and don't have to risk your millions of dollars trained pilot(maybe not that much but the pilots are very valuable military resources).
And the second one:I don't quite think so.To give the full use of UAV,means not only to let it fly in the sky but also need some fast and secure way to transmit the data,that requires satellite data link support.I don't know how far China has achieved,but US has always been bonding the UAVs to its highly developed satellite communication systems.So together you got a functional UAV surveillance and strike system.W/o satellite support UAV is no more than big RC toys.So for this reason UAV will not be quite available for those countries which can't even afford a basic satellite system.Just like iphone, itself is not very expensive, but after you own it, the bill from the telecom company every month will reveal its real cost.
So that's my point: UAVs can be the game changer and to fully use them you need the whole C4ISR than just UAV,so you need to be rich to get the whole set.