The smaller the craft, the less it will loiter, with a lower payload, at a lower altitude.
Simple as that.
Count VKS tactical force by tails(actual units, not storage numbers), then divide the result by non-surge daily flight rate over the whole frontline from Kharkov to Odessa.
You'll get a surprisingly low number - whole Russian armies (which are basically divisions in terms of manning=they require even more support to compensate) get a share of as little as 20-50 fixed-wing sorties per day. This is really not that much. Frankly speaking, if UkrAF wasn't so poor, this level of overstretching could be dangerous... but manned PSU are just impotent, and Russian land forces are just one hell of a porcupine(Ukrainian ones too, actually, as both forces are two largest post-Soviet armies, but their needles are decades old).
Moreover, this sortie number is not even - frogfoots with their simplicity and tenacity are traditionally overrepresented in the sortie rate. But they don't carry a lot, nor they are PGM carriers.
Due to the previous point, just a few MALEs per theater can give as much presence over the battlefield as many many more big fast fixed wings. Precisely because they're not fast fuel annihilators.
And they will prosecute a lot of their tasks in the meantime - Recon(+strike when really necessary), ELINT, EW, whatever you have for them.
HALEs are just priceless, but we don't know if Russian HALEs are even in combat or not. There is just no way to know w/o someone politely sharing AWACS screen with us.
American and NATO Global Hawks are loitering over the Black sea non-stop, btw, and you guess to whom data from them goes to.
It can, and it does - by all accounts, more than a few Ukrainian drones were caught on land. But this is war, shit happens.
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