Let me tell you how useful an automatic weapon is against a swarm of drones: not useful at all. Those drones are very similar to the laptops and tablets we use everyday and can be mass produced in millions on the Pentagon/Occupation/etc. 1+ trillion budgets. PRISM and company will just supply the targets - leaders, current and potential, of an opposition.
With the huge R&D investments of DAPRA&Co they need fewer and fewer people to operate. It's not a problem to find a few dozens of loyal people ready to kill kids and whoever else tries to disobey the orders.
