It's being seen as a wired device for some reason.  Is this a vendor driver, or an upstream kernel driver, or a kernel staging driver?  It's likely that the driver doesn't identify itself as a wifi device properly.

The r8712u is a kernel staging driver.
It seems to be a networkmanager regression though.
With networkmanager 0.9.2, the device is seen as a wireless device.

What kind of information would be useful to help debug this problem?

iwconfig sees the interface as a wireless device.
Would this be the case if the driver was not identifying itself as a wifi device property?

By the way, here is the output of udevadm info --query=all --path=/sys/class/net/wlan0

P: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.5/0000:06:00.0/usb4/4-2/4-2:1.0/net/wlan0
E: DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.5/0000:06:00.0/usb4/4-2/4-2:1.0/net/wlan0
E: ID_BUS=usb
E: ID_MODEL=RTL8191S_WLAN_Adapter
E: ID_MODEL_ENC=RTL8191S\x20WLAN\x20Adapter\x20
E: ID_MODEL_FROM_DATABASE=RTL8191SU 802.11n WLAN Adapter
E: ID_MODEL_ID=8172
E: ID_REVISION=0200
E: ID_SERIAL=Manufacturer_Realtek_RTL8191S_WLAN_Adapter_00e04c000001
E: ID_SERIAL_SHORT=00e04c000001
E: ID_TYPE=generic
E: ID_USB_DRIVER=r8712u
E: ID_USB_INTERFACES=:ffffff:
E: ID_USB_INTERFACE_NUM=00
E: ID_VENDOR=Manufacturer_Realtek
E: ID_VENDOR_ENC=Manufacturer\x20Realtek\x20
E: ID_VENDOR_FROM_DATABASE=Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
E: ID_VENDOR_ID=0bda
E: IFINDEX=3
E: INTERFACE=wlan0
E: SUBSYSTEM=net
E: SYSTEMD_ALIAS=/sys/subsystem/net/devices/wlan0
E: TAGS=:systemd:
E: USEC_INITIALIZED=2878752

Driver obtained here.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=48&Level=5&Conn=4&ProdID=277&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true#2772

┌─[conor]──[shodan]:~$
└──>>udevadm info --query=all --path=/sys/class/net/wlan0
P: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.1/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/net/wlan0
E: DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.1/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/net/wlan0
E: ID_BUS=usb
E: ID_MODEL=802.11n_WLAN_Adapter
E: ID_MODEL_ENC=802.11n\x20WLAN\x20Adapter
E: ID_MODEL_FROM_DATABASE=RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN
E: ID_MODEL_ID=8176
E: ID_REVISION=0200
E: ID_SERIAL=Realtek_802.11n_WLAN_Adapter_00e04c000001
E: ID_SERIAL_SHORT=00e04c000001
E: ID_TYPE=generic
E: ID_USB_DRIVER=rtl8192cu
E: ID_USB_INTERFACES=:ffffff:
E: ID_USB_INTERFACE_NUM=00
E: ID_VENDOR=Realtek
E: ID_VENDOR_ENC=Realtek
E: ID_VENDOR_FROM_DATABASE=Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
E: ID_VENDOR_ID=0bda
E: IFINDEX=2
E: INTERFACE=wlan0
E: SUBSYSTEM=net
E: USEC_INITIALIZED=6932506

If any other out output is required please let me know.

Conor: any idea how your package of NM got built?  Make sure there isn't "--without-wext" in the configure options, which we've found being passed on Gentoo already.  NM 0.9.4 allows builders to disable WEXT, but it's on by default to ensure that using the same configure options as used with 0.9.2 don't result in WEXT being disabled.  But if somebody updated your distro's build configuration to disable WEXT explicitly, you'll get the problem described here.

Unfortunately, the Realtek drivers are still using WEXT, and they're still in staging, which means they may not work as well as the official kernel wifi drivers.

Dan thanks for letting us know. This is right, we built networkmanager without WEXT.

I think this can be closed as NOTABUG.
I just upgraded to the latest version of the package which doesn't disable WEXT and everything runs smoothly :-)

Will test once I get a chance to use 0.9.4.0-4.  Still only showing me 0.9.4.0-3

Update to 0.9.4.0-4 has resolved this.  Many thanks.