Turkey had a lot of success in its Syria incursion using lots of relatively inexpensive drones. Syria's Russian-equipped air defence systems struggled to stop them. And then Turkey-equipped Azerbaijan used the same drones to great success in the recent war against Armenia.
The message is that the future of warfare is drones that cost $5 million each not fighter jets that cost $100 million each (which is the ballpark the F-35 is in). You can buy 20 of the former for the cost of one of the later. And the question is, what military benefit does that one fighter jet give you compared to the twenty drones you could spend the same money on?
The message is, in low-grade conflicts, with varying situations, 'very small cheap drones' have a role.
Turkey's drones are small, cheap, often used for reconnaissance - not exactly the role of a fighter.
It means we're going to see a lot more drone use for close ground support, but that was inevitable.
But again - a capable enemy has defences against those drones, and generally speaking those drones are not going to be doing deep into territory doing tactical strikes, again those types of drones are easily defended against.
Drones are also not carrying payloads of 500lb and 1000lb bombs and other larger munitions.
The role of drones in Azerbaijan and Libya is quite somewhat different from the what role of the F35 would be.
Edit: I should add - obviously not just in low-grade situations, smaller drones especially will be fairly ubiquitous.
> I'm wondering if the US's customers are pushing for these cheaper drone options
I don't think I was the only one to miss how that conflict related to the F35. Do tell?