I was thinking about drones and why they suck so badly and I had an epiphany. Drones are Ninjas!
Ninjas are sneaky, fast, and seem like they should be really tough. They train for years learning their skills (expensive to build), but then it's all wasted because they get killed on their first mission. A large group of Ninjas will always get beat up in a fight even when they have the other guy outnumbered because they don't attack the good guy all at once. They come at him one at a time and get picked off.
Drones are the Ninjas of the SE4 universe.