> Do you discount the impact of drones, or did you put a lot of value in them before the war and still do?

I don't discount the impact of drones, quite the opposite. I did, and still do, put a lot of value in them. Point in fact: I worked in the commercial UAV industry (in the USA) before and during the war, though recently laid off. I feel like I was underutilized.

As a matter of fact, drones aren't being used as much as I expect them to be, nor in all the theatres that I expect them to be.

For air:

UAVs for surveillance? Yes, we've seen plenty of videos of this. But not to the extent that I expect. Color and thermal video? Yup. Ground radar? Not so much. Air radar? Nope. Radio signal extension/repeaters? Sort-of, not really. Decoys? Recently yes but not quite used for the purposes that I expect.

UAVs for dropping bombs? Yes, plenty of this. But the examples I see are typically quite crude compared to what I expect... with an emphasis on cheaply produced vehicles capable of dropping generically-attached bombs. Makes sense given the economics of the war. But these are IMO over-represented compared to what other capabilities UAVs could have. Dropping incendiaries (eg, dragon burning a forest) seems to be an evolution in kind but not really a revolution of new tech.

UAVs for suicidal destruction? Yes, we see this too, mostly against ground vehicles. These are crude, but seem to be quite effective.

UAVs for ground strafing? I see very little, if any, of it. I think this would probably be more effective than dropping grenades (let the computer do the aiming) so I'm surprised I don't see this concept used much.

UAVs for air superiority? Very little, very crude. I don't see many weapons mounted on drones shooting at other manned or unmanned air vehicles. I see more UAVs trying to ram other UAVs instead. I don't see UAVs having missiles mounted on them (though the UAV itself might be a missile...). I think there's a lot of underrepresented opportunity for UAVs to have light missiles for air-to-air capability. Conversely, I do hear a lot of complaints from both sides about the other side's use of UAVs, which tells me that UAV air-to-air capabilities aren't as well developed or deployed as I'd expect.

UAVs for logistics? Some, but it doesn't seem to be as much as I'd expect. Ammunition is too heavy for current generation UAVs to move a meaniningful amount. But I think there's plenty of opportunity for UAVs to move food parcels, medical components, limited amounts of technical components, and limited amounts of water. I suspect that UAVs are under-utilized for this purpose, but I don't have access to battlefield data to understand risk/reward tradeoffs here.

Then, for ground:

UGVs for fire suppression? Some, but not much. Small little rovers mostly and the ones I've seen in public videos seem much more mechanically complicated than a UAV. The biggest limitation here might be fuel or power. Knowing the current state of computer vision, and given that a ground vehicle can be a spectacularly stable platform from which to fire a gun, and a computer can aim quite quickly and precisely from a calibrated and stable platform, I think that unmanned ground vehicles are significantly under-utilized and/or under-developed especially in defensive capabilities.

UGVs for ground-to-air? Significantly less than I expect.

UGVs for ground logistics? Not really much at all. I suppose the amount of materiel (fairly insignificant) they can move around is not worth the cost to build/maintain.

And, for sea:

USVs for naval combat? Less in total numbers than I expect, but the ones I do see seem to have an outsized impact and are far more sophisticated than I expect when compared to other types of unmanned vehicles I see. It seems (from my perspective) that navies have invested significantly into unmanned vehicle capabilities.