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It's common in sci-fi movies, to have robots make bleeps and boops that would have no logical, in-universe purpose, but they're put in the movie to convey a "robotic" vibe to the audience- Basically, it's because viewers EXPECT robots to bleep and boop.

Similar to the reason that C3p0 and r2d2 "talk" audibly, when real droids could silently communicate far more efficiently with radio waves, and why the T-800 in 'Terminator' has a heads-up display in plain English, when translating to English serves no real purpose- A real robot would "think" and communicate in binary zeros and ones, and in machine code.

Robots in movies don't need to account for the real-world needs/functions of an actual robot... but they DO need to communicate to viewers that "this is a robot, doing robot stuff".

Added: Another explanation for the drones' loud, frightening noises is intimidation.

Oblivion is based on the director Joseph Kosinski's unpublished graphic novel of the same name which he had developed with Arvid Nelson for Radical Comics. Initial rushes of the novel were shown at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con by Kosinski while promoting his then-upcoming movie Tron: Legacy (2010). The novel attracted a lot of attention from movie studios with quite a lot of them bidding for the movie rights. The rights were eventually secured by Universal Pictures. Oblivion is planned to be published as an "illustrated novel", not a graphic novel. See Jesse Berger's (co-founder of Radical Studios, the future publisher) comment here:For clarification, the illustrated novel will be published. 100% fact. Radical controls the publication rights and has every intent to release the book. Unfortunately, as the film began to take off, Joes focused turned towards the film and the release of the book was delayed so that the twist of the film would not be revealed. Joe may have lost interest, but Radical has not! Like all of Radicals content, while we always hoped that we would be so lucky to make films, tv shows, games and merchandise from our titles, we always first focused on telling incredible stories, by visionary creators, with amazing art and top quality paper, marketing and distribution. That is the case with the Oblivion illustrated novel, which is a powerful story, but unfortunately, we will have to wait for the holdout period to expire after the films release, before we can put the book out. Hold guys, the world will see this amazing product soon enough.

-Jesse Berger, Co-founder/EVP Radical Studios.

From the director:

The notion of heavy hydrogen or deuterium existed in our seawater as being a very special thing in the universe. Heavy hydrogen is an element that exists in very trace amounts in our seawater, and it's used to create kind of the purest form of fusion energy. that's one thing that makes Earth valuable, that energy source.

Ionized deuterium also gives off a pinkish-red hue which would explain the pinkish color emitted from the drones' power cores.

From the director:

Well, there's a little clue when Jack goes to the stadium, the drone 166 has been shot down and the fuel cell has been taken and it's been damaged. Vika says to Jack, "The whole central core is off alignment, you don't have the necessary tools down there." And Jack uses a piece of chewing gum to glue a piece back in place so that it works. That is an example of something that only a human can do. That level of ingenuity, that level of improvisation is something that we are very good at. The Tet realizes that we are very useful at thinking on our feet and on the fly. That's why humans make great drone repairmen. What the Tet didn't realize is that same level of ingenuity and what it is that makes us special ultimately leads to us getting the idea that maybe there's a way to take down the system. here[/link]]

While similarities can be found between the two works, Kosinski wrote the story for Oblivion in 2005 after moving to Los Angeles, but the writers' strike in 2007 prevented him from shopping around the treatment to studios, so he had Radical Comics begin turning the project into a graphic novel. The unreleased graphic novel was later used to pitch the movie to film studios. 'Moon' was released in 2009.

It is not made clear in the film whether or not the Tet is acting autonomously, unbeholden to any alien species, or performing duties assigned to it by, or on behalf of, some aliens who might've created it. The film establishes that the Tet utilizes deuterium extracted from Earth's seawater to power itself and its drones, but the audience does not learn if this fuel energy-source is also being collected and harvested for delivery back to some extraterrestrial point of origin. It is also possible that the Tet is now a self-sustaining AI with only the intention of survival for itself, moving from one world to the next much like a parasite. This is what Malcolm hinted at. The answer to this question is mostly left to viewer speculation.