Oh for heaven's sake, do your homework!  A "drone" is nothing but a radio-controlled model airplane!  Such have been used, to limited extent, by the military ever since World War One.  The largest of them today is barely a fraction the size of a manned plane, and has a correspondingly tiny bomb-load: no more than one small guided missile apiece, nothing compared to a manned bomber, let alone a whole-flight airstrike or an artillery barrage.  This is why they're usually used for camera-spying rather than actual attacks.

Yes, there was a strategy of using them for smart-missile pin-point bombing, but it hasn't worked very well -- precisely because the missiles were supposed to be guided by beacons, which were planted by native informants, who proved to be totally untrustworthy.  Remember that a machine can do only what it's told to do, and when the information it's given is bad, it's performance will be the same.

That's the whole story with Those Evil-Evil Drones.  All the rest is the result of propaganda and tactical rumor-mongering.  The real reason why the Arabs and their sympathizers are howling for pity-pity

about "drones" is that they *work*.  They're very good at aerial spying, and can be used well for pinpoint bombing -- but the target has to be verified by something better than a local Arab with a grudge.

By the way, a particular weakness of drones is that they're much easier than manned planes to shoot down.  A single shooter with a good rifle can do it.  Think about that.

--Leslie