I imagine they're talking more about missiles, which have had "autonomous" (for some definitions of autonomous) guidance systems for decades.

"Drones" aren't really a new thing apart from how cheap they are. We've had television guided missiles (the level of autonomy most modern "drones" in Ukraine have) since WWII. Arguably we've had non-TV guided missile prototypes since WWI (Kettering Aerial Torpedo). We've had autonomously guided missiles (radar homing) since the early 50s, and optically guided ones since the early 70s.

The capability keeps expanding of course, but it's been pretty incremental.