Here, drones mean FPV drones like DJI Mavic.
SPYDER is ineffective against bird-sized quadcopters.
Dji Mavic is not a FPV drone, its a camera drone. Dji is new to FPV and there are only two DJi FPV drones till now, they are DJI FPV and DJI Avata (which I own). Most FPV drones used in combat are actually custom built drones, which is easy to build once you know the basics. Learning to fly it is somewhat hard but, with practice, its easy.
The Ukrainians are the ones who first weaponized these FPV drones against Russians with great results and that is why you see even Russians use them now. Th US is creating a separate brigade who built and use FPVs to develop doctrines and tactics. And also working on increasing the video and control range and payload delivery. At the start there were only kamikaze FPVs but, now there are FPV bombers and attackers.
Typically camera drones like Mavic are used for recon and target identification due to their better "on station" duration. Once targets are identified, the dets are forwarded to the attack drone operators or fpv pilots who then based on the target profile choose the type of FPV to be deployed. They then pilot the fpv to the target and destroy it. Typically to be stealthy (fpv drones are loud) they fly the drone high and then dive (with zero throttle, making it silent) at their target(s), just like dive bombing. Other tactics include flying really low and fast to the target which gives the target zero reaction time. Then BDA is carried out by the mavic operator and results forwarded to the fpv pilots.
These are the basic tactics used as of now. It keeps evolving at a very fast rate and this has started changing warfare significantly. For example a Russian FPV pilot took out a million dollar leopard tank in combat using a thousand $ something fpv drone. And most of these weaponised fpv drones are analog so jamming dont really work as effectively as it works on digital fpv drones. Once I flew my Avata from the base of bababudangiri hill in chikmangalur to a mobile tower on the peak, went really close and lost the video signal, luckily i was able to reverse and save the drone and prevent it from crashing. If i was using an analog fpv drone, i don't think that would happen but, video quality would be shit.
There are a lot more exciting stuff in the world of fpv when it comes to military applications and I sincerely hope Indian companies and defense recognize this and move their asses. Its not that expensive and super effective. Even against terrorists, this can save a lot of lives of our soldiers.
My advise to all forum members is to learn to fly FPV, you can learn it on a simulator downloaded from steam but, will need to get a remote controller. In case we have a war with China and civilians are mobilized this skill would be very very very useful in the defense of our land.
DJI Avata which i found the IDF uses in the tunnels is a good beginner fpv system (drone, goggles and controller) but, it is expensive in India. It is super fun to fly and a very unique experience. Once I am pro with Avata i am planning to get a custome long range fpv. Lets see.
You can refer the below videos on more details on weaponized FPVs. Sorry for off topic.
