Thanks for engaging. You raise a number of interesting points worth exploring, but the end of of the day, I think it all boils down to two of them.
3a. Do drone strikes exacerbate or mitigate the problem violent actors and actions in the long run.
5. if decision makers are capable of assessing 3a and acting in accordance with public interest.
Regarding 3a, I can see the obvious logic of how drone strikes(or any bombing/killing) could militarize more people and think it is plausible. It is worth considering that there are other factors which can militarize people as well, such systemic injustice, domestic violence, poverty, and cults of personality. These can continue independent of strikes and still increase the number of militarized people in it's absence. It is also worth noting that the capacity for harm for those already militarized increases with organization, which strikes purportedly disrupt.
It would absolutely be worth the cost to collect solid data on the drivers of militarization. I would love to see it and admit that I have not looked deeply into the subject. Most discussions on the subject I have seen take 3a or its opposite as a foundational assumption.
Regarding 5, I wholeheartedly agree that in reality there are additional motivations at play. However, I am generally skeptical of traditional military-industrial complex profiteering motive and think it is over complex. I do not think that defense companies lobbying for war and has a significant impact on it, although companies provide the means and certainly profit off of it. Similarly, I dont think military decision makers seek war for personal gain. There are a sufficient number of other motivations political decision makers to engage in warfare without such elaborate and clandestine explanations. I suspect personal political benefit, national economic benefit, and propagating social ideals at the global level are at the top of this list. You are right in that minimizing the long term loss at the global scale is not the main objective.