Foreign Affairs has an interesting article about drones:

[https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-drone-delusion]

America’s Drone Delusion

Why the Lessons of Ukraine Don’t Apply to a Conflict With China

While everyone is running around claiming the answer to everything on the battlefield is drones, the reality is that the Ukraine war is not the best military example to work from. Ukraine is a largely land-based, attritional, infantry dominated battlefield where smart drone use can deliver an advantage at the small-unit tactical level.

As the article suggests, projections of force into say the Chinese pacific are unlikely to benefit that much from the kind of drones used in Ukraine.

And then there's the question of unmanned fighting vehicles and robots. China is already a world leader in this kind of technology, and has the manufacturing capability and capacity to churn them out that few other nations could compete with, and any war with China will inevitably involve both.

Ukraine is actually much more like the First World War - with drones and glide bombs - than any future war.

But the military always likes to look back rather than forward.

Drones may just be the cavalry of today.