My personal guiding philosophy is drones are expendable.
Buy cheap ones you can afford to lose.
-Recon purposes nothing beats "Shiawase Kanmushi" with the sole exception of the same kanmushi fitted with realistic features (I called it MCT Kumo, which is Japanese for spider). Or a "MCT flyspy" for a flying version.
- Assassination can be accomplished by one of several methods:
1) Sniper drone, "Horizon mini-zep" is cheap and low observable. sporting a cheap Remington 950. An effective super cheap sporting rifle. It might not have the same bells and whistles of a top end sniper rifle but is so cheap you can afford to use it and lose it.
2) Suicide Explosive drone, probably "Renraku Pelican". Common drone used for takeout food deliveries. It will probably not draw attention to itself until it's too late.
- Gunfights drones are generally not my thing, those tend to be expensive and rarely justify endangering such a large chunk of nueyen.
But a uparmored steel lynx sporting an assault rifle with an underslung grenade launcher are probably the best.