It is inexcusably obnoxious to do without iCloud, thanks to iOS' hamstrung file system & APIs, plus lightning being stuck on USB 2.0 speeds. But I think this is why the iPad Pro is on USB-C now: so you can hook up an external hard drive with all your bigass files.
I'm surprised they haven't added support in Finder for the iPad to just show up with direct access to its file directory. Surely you must be able to directly move files between an iPad and a Mac that don't require going over Airdrop or iCloud?
