But we’ve also been using our own drones for more than 20 years now, longer than most other countries.
The key is that due to our kleptocratic military industrial complex, we're not able to produce these drones cheaply. Our military and its supply chains are built around producing very small numbers of very expensive weapons. We can't even get Congress to pass a military right to repair. Contractors bilk the taxpayers for spare parts at a 10000% markup, and our system is too corrupt to end their thievery.
The hard truth is that our military isn't actually built to win wars against competent peer or near-peer opponents. It's built to line the pockets of defense contractors. Or, to use a car analogy, Iran is producing cheap $5k k trucks. Our military is running on $100,000 low margin, high profit SUVs.