Yep. They are great in a permissive environment. They've not been tried out very often in a non permissive environment, the shoot down video (which I have seen) being a nice data point to consider, and the Iranians having their way with a fancy American drone is another data point.
My experience with coordinating manned and unmanned ops tells me that as with most air power scenarios, you first establish air superiority, air supremacy, or air dominance (pick whichever doctrinal term you like and see if you can apply the conditions) and then have at it with the remotely armed reconnaisance.
That said, there is an entire family of small UAV's organic to ground units that you'd expect to see used regardless of the above. They'd be expected to have a medium to high attrition rate while hostilities are in progress.