"Hobby drones cost a few hundred dollars and can be rigged with explosives."
You mean I can do that with my
Mavic Mini 2? How interesting. A new way to go hunting?
Realistically, this is about as accurate as any other kind of popular press hype. Maybe drones that cost a few thousand can pose a threat, but small cheap ones? Are the good small cheap drones being hidden from us consumers?
As a former army artillery officer, I can accurately state that our forces face all kinds of unconventional threats, and have for decades. There's nothing new here, except the hype. Threat capable drones have been around for years, and have been slowly getting better over time. And of course there's the random use of hobby/consumer drones to harass forces, but given their limited range, limited payload and the need for a human operator, how much of a threat are they, compared to all the other tools a fighter (conventional or not) has at their disposal?
Whenever I see an article like this, I always ask "why" and "how" it got published. More likely than not a defense contractor seeking increased funding is behind it. A feature of these PR driven articles is often vagueness, which this article has in spades.