Questions like this are why I don’t like “drone” as a catchall description. Drones are everything from single use first person view suicide devices, to off the shelf quad copters for recon, to essentially unmanned aircraft, to essentially just more controllable long range missiles.
Ukraine has adopted Vykhors as the “standard” for their first person view suicide drones. These are often seen in footage with PG warheads attached and modified so the drone can fly straight at an armored target.
Ukraine has also been using Bayraktar TB2, which are essentially unmanned aircraft which fire air to ground munitions and then return to base.
The Russians use for example the Orlan-10 for recon. They are recovered after using a parachute to help land in one piece.
Russia purchased from Iran, and now makes its own version of the Shahed 136, a long range drone (about 1500 mile range) that is essentially just a highly controllable missile. The payload is built into the drone.
These are just a few examples and not an exhaustive list. The examples should illustrate the wide range of sizes, costs, and uses of drones though.
There are also big hexa or octacopter ones that can have multiple munitions attached to them that they can drop from high up.
A lot of the FPV (first person view) small drones from the video’s are 1-way, even the ones that are slightly more fancy with the dropping mechanism might not go back to base for rearm and instead get ditched in a third location for potential reuse later. This is because there is a risk of an enemy drone following your fpv drone home, giving away your location. This happened to the US in the middle east not long ago, I’ll update if I find a news article about it.
