Sturbs
Another misconception. My daughter is an absolute dab hand on Star Wars Lego on the Playstation, but she would be absolutely pants at flying armed-ISR within a complex ATO/ACO whilst providing on call CAS with a 10ton aircraft armed with Hellfire and GBU-12.
Maybe we should leave you to your Haynes Manual?
For what its worth there is only one RAF SO2 on the UAS PT (note it is not an IPT) and he is a very good requirements manager as the only RAF man in the team. So your friend "in the know" is telling you porkies, my friend. In fact the UAS PT is very small when you consider how many aircraft they have to look after - another saving over the manpower budget compared to manned assets.
When it comes to bandwidth costs for a typical 3-5 megabit Ku link, this typically is roughly £100k per megabit per second per year (commercial rates). Therefore, a single predator orbit would be of the order of £500k per year. The capitation cost (ie. Full cost of a serviceman) of a Sgt is about £70k per year and for a Flt Lt about £90k. Therefore, for the price of 4 crews (4x Flt Lts and 4x Sgts) is the same as the Ku bandwidth for a year. Now to run a single 24hr orbit would take 12 crews on Ku band satcom - to run it from within theatre would take 3 times that amount ( so there's the monetary saving of about £1M per year).
Finally, the US have been looking at the next generation of UAS that may have automated ground refuelling and rectification from robotic servicing (similar to the robots that conduct car manufacture) - so I wouldn't be too complacent about your job being safe in the next 10-20 years! The Holy Grail would be to reduce the manpower footprint in the forward area (ie. Ground crew and aircrew).
LJ