Ukraine is using drones as a substitute for many military capabilities it doesn't have, and is fighting a war where it is in desperate need of whatever munitions it can get to be used over a relatively short distance. Drones have undoubtedly become part of the battlefield, but a war between great powers being waged on the opposite side of the world is going to look very different from a small nation holding off it's neighbor.
At some point there's going to be on the ground fighting from either force invading the territory of one of the power poles in the conflict or their neighbors who are not aligned with the nearest pole; in US v Russia that would be happening somewhere in Europe in one of the NATO allies, US v China probably Taiwan/Philippines/Japan/Korea/India depending.
Wherever that happens to be will be a good candidate for the kind of warfare we see in Ukraine right now. There's basically no way it doesn't reach that at some point unless it's a very brief skirmish and even then for some pairings there's the inevitable border sparing even if there's minimal direct land conflict.
Drones for Ukraine provide cheap low material risk precision strike options that would normally be done by the US using precision artillery/missiles (expensive per shot cost and very vulnerable to counter battery fire) or airstrikes (relies on establishing air superiority which has proven difficult for Ukraine and Russia, anti air is long enough range it's difficult to strike so no one has fully knocked their opponent's system offline). Russia proved to be a bit of a paper bear but there's no guarantee the US would be able to establish the kind of air superiority we enjoy in all our recent conflicts (heavily punching down power wise) in a fight with China or maybe even Russia.
There's going to be ground fighting somewhere, and those nations that are in similar situations to Ukraine right now should be taking a lot of notes from the Ukraine conflict. Taiwan should be setting up the infrastructure to mass produce drones.
It's very unlikely that the US, on the other hand, is going to find itself in a position at all similar to Ukraine's anytime soon. It's not going to put its forces anywhere that they don't have air superiority, and its strategy will focus on utilizing its large and technically advanced forces to maximize overall impact, not minimizing cost per shot. That doesn't mean that the US won't be able to make any use of drones, but it means that the rate it would use drones is going to be different (and almost certainly lower). The US may want the capability to supply its more vulnerable allies with drones, but the limiting factor there is probably going to be the supply lines and political will rather than manufacturing capacity; and it would make sense to help build up these capabilities in allied nations. This buys time and frees up resources for the US to provide the high end, war winning equipment that it specializes in.
nah NATO would own the skies pretty hard. Different story vs. China, but Russia's aerospace forces are a shadow of the USSR's.
Russia's AA has been seriously degraded -- still more than enough to dominate the AFU's aircraft, but not a real airforce -- and Ukraine's limited AA has been enough to check the VVS's air dominance.
there is a reason its mostly a ground war involving disposable drones.
