These drones are useless if you don't have the satellites that control them.
unless they plan on using it only under the satellite that they had recently launched.
You could achieve a 10-15 mile radius with radio control. For defending a position with cheap flying objects, that's more than enough.
I think this is propaganda without much truth to it - but you are correct that UAVs (currently) depend on a lot of infrastructure, especially satellites - gps and command/control stuff.