[int_19h]

A state actor with billions of dollars to invest would just use a regular missile. But not against another state actor with billions of dollars to invest into anti-air defense. The only reason why these are used in places like Syria or Yemen is because there's nobody there with the capacity to reliably shoot down drones and/or warplanes.

[wongarsu]

I don't think there is any air defense system capable of defending vast civilian areas from drone attacks?

The closest is probably the Israeli Iron Dome, and that costs about $50M for a battery with 17km range. Great for a tiny country under constant attack, but hardly economical for good coverage of larger countries.

[int_19h]

The drones that are capable of launching those missiles are huge, and require airstrips to operate - we're not talking quadcopters here. Consider that e.g. Reaper - which can carry at most 2 such missiles - has a wingspan of 15 meters, and weighs a ton. Any such thing trying to cross the border would be quickly detected and shot down, same as any other warplane.

There is a different issue with small off-the-shelf quadcopters that are turned into "assassin drones" by adding a small shaped charge sufficient to kill the target if they manage to get close enough to detonate it point blank. But that's also something the Secret Service can handle fine, once they realized that it was a viable attack vector.