Considering what we've been seeing in the Russia-Ukraine and Iran-Israel wars, drones are definitely happening at scale. For better or for worse, I expect worldwide production of drones to greatly expand over the coming years.

This makes no sense, just because something didn't become as big as the hypemen said it would doesn't make the inventions or users of those inventions disappear.

For something to be considered “happening” you can’t just have a handful of localized examples. It has to be happening at a large noticeable scale that even people unfamiliar with the tech are noticing. Then you can say it’s “happening”. Otherwise, it’s just smaller groups of people doing stuff.