Most of the billions are to replace weapons and munitions (mostly old) sent to Ukraine, shortly after which the Russians will proclaim them blown up 3 or 5 times over, and the Ukrainians will publish a bunch of vids showing Russians and Russian gear getting blown up — but even if the Ukies are scoring a 50% “hit” ratio overall (unlikely), that’s not enough, at least so far, for their purposes.
This will then cause complaints that we (the US) is spending far to much on war / the MIC / defense, but that pretty much falls apart when you look at our actual defense spending as a % of GDP going back to pre-WW1 or so, and especially post WW2. Post WW2 we are nearing historic lows in defense spending, and anyone who thinks this world in the 2020’s has not become exceedingly dangerous, and accelerating that trend, I don’t even bother to argue with any more: Those people are just ignorant, nuts, or propagandists.
As for drones, people forget that Ukraine has a pretty decent University system, and not long ago was a key part of the USSR’s MIC. They let a lot of that last go, believing the US and UK would protect them — a ghastly mistake — but they seem fairly adept at improvising with Western technology and whatever they can turn up at home. I doubt they need any help with avionics and so on, at all. But advanced guidance, EW and counter-EW are the province of the West, and, well, Ukraine has the perfect field testing lab, I must say. Certainly most of the billions are not going into drone development, but, a couple billion $$ or so would go a long way when it comes to prototyping, setting up pre-production and production, training operators, and field tests.
Russia better get cracking on their defenses as Ukraine claims it now has a 3000 km (range) drone.
We should co-opt add mass manufacturing of that armed 3000 k. Drone and supply it to them in truly massive numbers.
It might buy them time til we finish ramping up artillery manufacturing and delivery and get their F-16s delivered and effectively flying.