UAVs are finally entering aerial combat. How did we miss this?

Dave wrote an article about the Navy's UAV that will be Tomcat sized.  But in doing so he buried the lead.  Read the article here, but this is what we all missed.  Air Power purist should be afraid.  They should be very afraid...

But Manazir cautioned that the UCLASS will not be nearly as stealthy as the F-35C.
“We’re not going have JSF-like stealth,” Manazir said. “You’re not going to have somebody that can go right over the top—you know—of the threat capital city, but you’re going to have something that can stand in somewhat.”
Alternatively, the UCLASS might be useful as a flying missile magazine to supplement the firepower of the F/A-18 and F-35C in air-to-air combat as a robotic wingman of sorts.
“Maybe we put a whole bunch of AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) on it and that thing is the truck,” Manazir said. “So this unmanned truck goes downtown with—as far as it can go—with a decision-maker.”
In those situations, Manazir said, a Northrop Grumman E-2D Hawkeye or a F-35C flight leader might command the UCLASS.
But the concepts for what missions the Navy might offload from manned aircraft to the UCLASS are still evolving.

So you're sitting there asking...Why should air power purist be afraid.  Its not only because someone is taking the idea of arming a UAV with AMRAAMs to potentially fire them at manned fighters.  Its because the guy who is making these statements is Rear Adm. Mike Manazir, the Navy's Director of Air Warfare.

He was diplomatic.

He deferred to the F-35C whenever he could.  But its obvious that the US Navy is definitely thinking beyond the F-35C when it comes to their air systems. One other tidbit caught my attention and I might be reading more into it than it deserves but check this out...

The Navy hopes to use the UCLASS as an aerial refueling tanker to extend the range of the tactical fighter fleet—particularly the Lockheed Martin F-35C Joint Strike Fighter. “We’re going to put a refueling capability into them and they’ll have an endurance package in them,” Manazir said. “They’ll be able to give away something like 20,000 lbs. of gas and still stay up for seven-and-a-half hours.”

By combining two tasks.  ISR and aerial refueling, the Navy is playing the game the right way.  They'll get the UAVs they want, at the size they want without threatening the F-35C program...at first anyway.  Its slick, as some would say its "strategic marketing" and it should get the plane past the bean counters.

This is gonna get good.