The managerial design of the military can't even pivot to cheap drone systems: there is no military career in such prosaic, low-budget items, no cushy jobs (ahem bribes) in such weapons system manufacture.
And yet drones now have demonstrated that with a dirt cheap military expenditure you can make the prospect of land invasion of your country by the United States impossible, because the tolerance for the 10,000s of casualties that will result are politically untenable even for a all-three-branch dominant cult of personality president like Trump.
On top of that, the US now is dangerously dependent on vastly expanded trade supply lines in a world where drone technology has now fundamentally compromised the security of world shipping. I'm not even talking about Iran in the Hormuz Strait, piddy dirt poor Yemen is now shutting down the Red Sea/Suez.
To proceed the US needs to do the following:
- invest vast sums (like, say the utterly worthless military budget we have now) in alternative energy and electrified/hybrid transportation to fundamentally eliminate the strategic significance of the Middle East, and destroy the political influence of global petroleum companies
- invest even more vast sums in onshoring / nearshoring manufacturing in North and South America, and vastly increase American domestic manufacturing
- obviously we need a massive sea change in drone adoption and technology in the armed forces... that does not however require vast sums, just willpower and a fundamental reprioritization of the military industrial complex
Where is the budget for all of these? Well, it's in the existing dinosaur military budget. Our Navy is only good for deep water interdiction, it can no longer approach within 100 miles of hostile shores. The Army and Marines are completely useless at ground operations and would get slaughtered by any country with reasonable drone capability. The Air force can continue to bomb, but it is fundamentally a losing economic proposition, and it can no longer pave the way for a ground invasion.