Geoff, this may help understand some of the technical aspects to be overcome (gleaned from a web source)
"I'm speculating, others might know definitely. I should guess that it works like the internet. The signal would not be analogue, but digital. It will be divided up into small packets and re-assembled locally in your set in the right order. If your set detects an error (the software can do this to some extent), it sends a message asking for that part of the signal to be repeated and it shows it on the screen only when no error is apparent. This might account for a delay. It is just a suggestion.
Concerning the delay in moving the joystick in the UK or Nevada and the drone responding above Afghanistan, if they use satellites in geostationary orbit, then these are at 22,500 miles, giving a round-trip of at least 45,000 miles which does not account for the fact that a single satellite is probably not sufficient -- that is it has to bounce from one satellite to another and so it is 45000 miles plus X where X is the distance between the necessary satellites up in the sky.
Speed of light is 186000 miles per second, but there is a delay, clearly.
If they don't use geostationary satellites, but low -earth orbit (LEO) or whatever other earth orbits there are (medium??) then LEO is a maximum altitude of 1200 miles, but now with the help of pictures you have to figure out how many satellites that you have to bounce it off and its more than in the geostationary orbit case. So you are still going to get a delay.
Stuff to do with packets and the like is probably irrelevant, as even if it is an IP network, and data is packetised, there is probably the equivalent of a circuit-switched transmission opened up for the pilot, by the DoD network protocols, to ensure that when the joy-stick is moved the drone responds in the shortest possible time.
As if he relies on an IP network with no notion of QoS (Quality of Service) where he overrides other packets, then the situation would be very silly. It would be silly to have the pilot moving the joy-stick, the drone not responding. The DoD ensures some level of Quality of Service which means that drone pilots override soldiers surfing the web on DoD networks".
As a further thought, take off and landing's are controlled locally, because of the stick demand to control surface moved delay. This is because of the realtime risks of crashing.
