An unmanned systems operator control system includes a hand held controller with a set of switches and control enumeration software specially configured to report a superset of virtual switches based on the physical switches. A core unit includes a first unmanned system control application subscribing to a first switch subset of the superset and outputting commands controlling a first unmanned system based on activation of the set of switches. A second unmanned system control application subscribes to a second switch subset of the superset and outputs commands controlling a second unmanned system based on activation of the set of switches. A mode switching subsystem is configured, in a first state, to map the set of switches to the first switch subset and, in a second state, to map the set of switches to the second switch subset.