Ukrainians eventually overcame it and now produce entirely China-free drones apart from IR lenses (when they are needed), and magnets. If that was possible surely bigger countries can do it easily.
Most of the drones, sure, but they also have a low-level (a few thousands per month) production of those with almost no China-origin components - only Ukrainian or Western made. They are still pricier than all-China though, at almost $1000 per (night vision) FPV drone able to carry 2kg.
Only really hard-to-replace part is magnets for electric motors.
Or maybe even buy the components from Ukraine if they’re producing at scale, not their priority at the moment but would provide some leverage for support.
In practice, it may be that NATO desperately needs Ukrainian military personnel to personally share their experience with drone warfare, or risk being Blitzkrieg'd by an equally drone-experienced Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZL1KzV54Cw
In reality, drones only matter because neither Ukraine nor Russia has a viable air force able to operate in SAM-rich environment, and they both ran out of artillery shells having to make do with the small amounts they can produce/buy. So it's not like that drones came out as superior to everything else, but everything else went out of business.
Drones are too low and too slow to counter planes. If either side had an air superiority, drones won't matter as theatre isolation will make them irrelevant.
If drones look like some uber weapon these days it's an aberration coming from archaic nature of both armies otherwise, at least now after their stock of munitions have been expended. Surely if there was a war of Iran vs Iraq nowadays, drones will probably be just as relevant. But not US vs China as both sides have workable air forces. And navies.
But you can ask, how come they’ve run out of artillery shells and haven’t run out of drones?
Answer: because drones are cheaper and easier to produce.
That suggests that drones will be a significant factor in any future conflict that occurs over an extended period of time. Russia is a country of 143 million people under an authoritarian regime that has been able to switch the economy to a war footing. If Russia can’t produce enough artillery shells, probably no-one can.
The effects of attrition on air power are also hard to predict as there’s very little recent data to go on. How long would it take the US to run out of F-22s during an extended war against a capable adversary? Possibly not very long, unless those planes are absolutely everything that they’re cracked up to be.
