The US military proceeded to spend about a billion dollars and fifteen years or so proving what the Israelis had accomplished was impossible (Aquila et al).
Without more details or a US response, frankly, it is impossible to tell how much of this report is fiction and how much is fact.
"True, they were little better that a closed circuit camera on a model airplane,"
- You are right. These short range "look over the next hill" craft are little more than line of sight radio controlled camera carriers. However, when you launch a drone over the horizon where the only ground reference for an on board camera is miles and miles of featureless ocean, you need a sophisticated GPS based guidance system.