It is pretty weak to claim that the enemy can't take control of the system. That is comparable to saying well, the enemy knows where the FBI stakeout teams are, can monitor their sensors and radio traffic, but at least they can't remotely start the swat team van's engine.
“The problem here is these video feeds have telemetry information such as where the sensor platform is located (altitude, location, airspeed) and more importantly, what they are looking at (location, altitude) and, by observing what they focus on over time, they can figure out the mission of that sensor platform.”
I agree. I think it’s a stretch to believe that if they won’t bother to encrypt the intelligence (video feeds), why bother to encrypt the telemetry too....
The best part is that they generally have these drones in a stealthy airframe (RCS-wise) to make them hard to detect, but then they likely broadcast in the clear the actual location (indirectly through video, if not directly through telemetry).
This is head-rolling stuff, but I am sure someone will get a raise and a promotion instead.