No? Modern artillery shells cost 5-10k per (50-70k for guidance kits + programmable) and kill at medium distance, with entire logistic park (including self propelled) and isr chain for proper deployment. It's a different tier / type of capability. It kills lots/plurality of casualties... and historically... relatively cheaply. Autonomous drones potential for scenarios like close quarters, interiors, entrenched positions. Depending on battlefield transparency you can autonomously transport a shitload drones to frontlines and have them hunt / deny difficult targets that artillery can't effective engage. Drones that don't find target can area deny by being proxy mines for limited time etc etc. All potentially much cheaper once you eliminate 1 drone 1 operator constraint.
And the drones which can do this cost (???) with a range of (???) and a flight time of (???).
The problem with the "drones will do it!" narrative people put out there is that it's anything and everything but what the drone is, what it weighs, it's volume and current production are all absent figures which simply fill in as "better then whatever you just said".
For example, a reasonably portable drone capable of ISR and limited infantry scale strike would be the Switchblade 300, already provided to Ukraine. This has a range of 30km a top speed of 161km/h and 20 minutes of flight time, with a 1.6 kg explosive payload - which is respectable. You could carry quite a lot of these to the front if you wanted to.
That particular system cost about $50,000 a unit - optimistically. It's likely that price could be bought down, but it does include the drone, launcher and ground control system. A reasonable price today would be closer to $15,000 judging from more recent products being offered.
If I hunt around a little then locally I could buy something like this[1] locally for $1,300 which has a 1kg drop payload...but only 10km of range, and a 45 minute flight time - and let's remember better radios will eat into that payload and flight time.
Now obviously different drones can do different things, but the core point is the same: drones don't magically not have logistical "mass". You can't fly a bunch of drones to the front for free - you need to either recharge or refuel them at the destination. Which means you need to stockpile them. Which means they can be spotted and destroyed on the ground. The loiter times aren't "days", they're still better measured in minutes counting hours at most.
All of these disadvantages apply to artillery too, of course but the point is that once you start considering the actual range brackets involved and the parameters of real systems built with current technology, including limiting technologies like energy storage, payload and physics of real explosives, the generic superweapon slips away. Ukraine is using a lot of drones because Ukraine can buy drones but can't easily get artillery and gun barrels for it. But Ukraine was also having a lot of trouble with Russia's considerable artillery advantage up until quite recently, and still is because of North Korean shell resupply.
The word "drone" gets substituted in for a superweapon fulfilling every role perfectly, with no actual physical parameters which would make it imperfect - and that type of thinking should give a lot of people pause particularly in the context of Ukraine where any number of systems have had their moment in the spotlight before either falling out of favor due to adaptation or simply no longer being the most applicable to the task (i.e. the various anti-tank weapons are still doing excellent anti-tank work...there's just very few Russian tanks any more).
Original comment is about article content - "SMALL" UAV, i.e. tactical / infantry / battlefield level. As in the small UAV war in UKR frontlines that US marines is training for is against likely obsolete platforms because UKR is not capable of developing anything more advanced, like next gen autonomous switchblade tier+ munitions that can be massed at scale due to obscenely low prices and minimal operator / controller requirements.
A more reasonable price floor would be $300-500 for a performant 5-8 inch drone comparable to kamikaze drones in UKR. In case of PRC, mass produced in modern factories, developed by resourced military R&D, value engineered/acquired with almost no margins etc etc, instead of improvised in small workshops and software tweaked by hobbyist like UKR. For reference large 30kg industrial DJI Agras agriculture robot with AESA radar cost 8k factory direct in domestic PRC market. Not many operators can afford to mass switchblade at US prices with US MIC markup (I'm guessing including US).
When I say proximity mine, I mean small drone parks itself in some nook in lower power model, it's possible to run camera/sensors for days tied to purpose designed commodity hardware/SoC/ASIC, i.e. yolo/edge algo detects a heat signature that's roughly human, drone turns on and hunts it. It's a glorified flying claymore. Can even fall back as dumb claymore. IMO in near term against highend forces, those are the kind of drones marines will likely face - if conflict somehow devolves into point where tactical level drones are being used at all. TBH something has likely gone very wrong higher up in the force spectrum / strategic / multi domain levels if conflict devolves into small tactical drones, i.e. mop up survivors. The real fight is probably already over before that point.
