I'm surprised the Marines on board weren't authorized to shoot them out of the sky. Perhaps it's time to develop some high power EM weapons to take them out, big magnetrons are cheap, and there is a lot of electrical power available onboard.
I'm willing to help develop countermeasures.
There's a youtuber that has a multi-hour autonomous drone, but it's solar powered and this was at night.
https://dronelife.com/2021/03/18/skyfront-gas-electric-hybri...
That could almost had done what’s reported from land, and easily from a small boat 50 miles away from the ships (which is well over the horizon).
Here it were international waters and no any weapons trained toward the ships - and even trained weapons isn't enough actually to start shooting.
During the cold war drones were huge, noisy, expensive, and had relatively short endurance. They weren't used in waves like drones can be now.
Zone denial seems like a reasonable response to today's threat environment.
But it's a fair point that shooting down an unmanned drone is a lot less aggressive than shooting down a manned one.
Of course, not starting a war with aliens that don't shoot seems wise.
They were 1000 feet in the air. Maybe read the article first.