Don't be so pessimistic. Drones have been used for search & rescue, storm chasing, and even precision farming (precision in the application of pesticides, etc.)
Unless we establish some artificial restrictions, that'll be inevitable.
The majority of People will want to defend themselves from threats --but people are also less willing than before to expend lives. Anti-war protesters against Iraqi and Afghan wars didn't assail their own soldiers any more --as in Vietnam, but rather couched it as 'we don't want American soldiers' lives put in harm's way' We are for the lives of soldiers so we are against war.... so with that the armed forces used more drones to make it more pallatable (fewer of our own lose lives). So, yes, I don't see why the Army etc, would not go in that direction, eventually.
Of course, antiwar protesters will have to find a new antiwar narrative --which may necessarily have some anti-self (anti-American) component which I think they have trying to avoid since it's a harder 'sell'.
Given that we will have foes, for whatever reason, and that some of those will irrationally engage with us, I would certainly prefer we use drones to people to fight those enemies. On ht other hand, since it will not incur the same amount of moral penalty from our side, we should reconsider when and how we'd said robotic fighters --in other words to try to ensure we don't run roughshod over perceived enemies rather than actual enemies who would bring destruction to us.