[Steltek]

You present two issues: 1) the US is slow to adapt to drone warfare and 2) the US is losing to Iran.

For 1), the US isn't in a hurry because there's no actual threat. The lack of drone warfare capabilities only impacts US action overseas and of the little bipartisan consensus left, one thing is clear: no new wars (Trump's Iran war is seen as betrayal from his own party but it's hard to oppose Dear Leader).

For 2), it's hard to win when you don't know what you're doing or declare victory when you don't know what your goals are. I'm not sure there's even domestic agreement that it's a war.

[inglor_cz]

1) actual threats tend to mature in weeks, so this is a good recipe to get caught with pants down.

2) I concur, there seem to be no actual goals there. There is a Croatian saying that "form whomever who doesn't know where he wants to sail, no wind is useful". This fits.

[Steltek]

1) Threats from who? Canada? Mexico? For the past ~150 years, the US has really only had overseas conflicts with few threats to domestic territory. The best argument you could make it the Cuba Missile Crisis, I suppose? If your immediate plan is to stop fighting in far away places, then drones aren't really a worry.

[inglor_cz]

Threats to your allies, for example.

"If your immediate plan is to stop fighting in far away places, then drones aren't really a worry."

Yes, you can dismantle the entire coalition your presidents put together for 70+ years, but at some cost. The US economy is heavily intertwined with the rest of the world, and it probably cannot decouple from China AND forty democratic countries that used to be US allies at the same time.

Might be cheaper just to respect the current entanglements, at least in the long run.