From what I understand, the difference between pilot vs non-pilot is that in the Air Force, the pilots are actually flying i.e. stick and rudder.
Depends on the UAV; Predator, Reaper or Global Hawk? Point made earlier is Air Force wants their GCS for Predator/Reaper T/M/S to be even more "stick and rudder". Global Hawk is a different scheme, but Air Force believes they can deal with FAA better if they have instrument rated pilots/navs making decisions and talking on the radios to avoid midairs and confusion.
Meanwhile the Army picked a General Atomics Predator variant, the
MQ-1C Warrior to satisfy its Extended Range/ Multi-Purpose (ER/MP) requirement. Even though it could use the proven Predator GCS, Army wants to develop a more game-like Graphical User Interface (GUI). Navy and Marine Corps are interested bystanders to this
face-off between Air Force and Army that have polarized views on
who flies their UAVs (not necessarily tied to control scheme)and
how the controls are fashioned.
Gamers wanted! US Army MQ-1C Warrior
The Fire Scout on the other had is more of point and click i.e. go there then there then land. Even a rate piot would have trouble landing a helo on a small boy at night via remote control.
RQ-8 Fire Scout
At one point in its somewhat checkered past, Fire Scout was cancelled, but development continued to produce the hopefully common TCS (Raytheon product) that would also be used for other UAVS rather than have multiple industry proprietary TCS/GCS proliferating. Then LCS grew out of VADM Cebrowski's (a transformational-thinking Aviator) "Street Fighter" vision and Fire Scout seemed like its perfect mate and its premature sentence to oblivion was cancelled. Now, the Army is also procuring a version as well.
Army Fire Scout variant