They couldn’t come close to dealing with thousands of drones. You can do a rough calculation for the number needed to overwhelm a laser by considering the speed they fly at (200mph seem to be a middle of the pack number for longer range attack drones) and the length of time it takes for the laser to aim and cause the drone to fail (in the order of 5 seconds or so from demo videos IIRC). In that 5 seconds, the drone will have travelled around a quarter of a mile. So for every mile of range the laser has, it can only fend off around 4 drones. Any more than that would have to be dealt with by the CIWS. So, even given a 10 mile effective range, and say three lasers, a ship would be overwhelmed by a fleet of around 120 drones. Round that up to 150 or so, and you’re scoring direct hits on it.
They couldn’t come close to dealing with thousands of drones. You can do a rough calculation for the number needed to overwhelm a laser by considering the speed they fly at (200mph seem to be a middle of the pack number for longer range attack drones) and the length of time it takes for the laser to aim and cause the drone to fail (in the order of 5 seconds or so from demo videos IIRC). In that 5 seconds, the drone will have travelled around a quarter of a mile. So for every mile of range the laser has, it can only fend off around 4 drones. Any more than that would have to be dealt with by the CIWS. So, even given a 10 mile effective range, and say three lasers, a ship would be overwhelmed by a fleet of around 120 drones. Round that up to 150 or so, and you’re scoring direct hits on it.