Ukraine releases dramatic FPV footage of drone attack on Russian airbases – video
Operation Spiderweb was 18 months in the making and involved use of remotely operated drones from Ukrainian territory
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So my thoughts watching this is that it wasn't exactly a quick attack. The drones were actually being used as quadcopters, manually controlled instead of seeking a target or coordinates, and they seem to be launched sequentially, likely because they're piloted locally by a limited pool of operatives.
This means that there was no useful jamming going on, and I wonder if any base personnel even tried to shoot them down.
If i understand correctly they sneaked in the drones into Russia and were released behind their wall of defenses.
Yeah sure, but if you go to a military base in your country and release a swarm of drones, they'll likely at least attempt to shoot them down, the base has its own wall of defence.
This is why they used small FPV drones and launched them just a few kilometers away. There was virtually no warning, and small low flying drones would be very difficult for any automated defensive system to detect in time.
I think the Russians also felt a false sense of security given how far these airbases are from Ukraine. They may have had defenses in place for larger drones flying all the way from Ukraine, but again, such a system would have difficulty with small drones flying at treetop level from a very short distance.
I remember reading that the drones were meant to be autonamous? (I refuse to look up how to spell that word and simply accept my incorrectness) so those pauses and such might just be whatever image recognitions is intended to identify the shape of an aircraft freaking out a bit. Would also explain sequential launches as it would stop them all dogpiling one plan and being wasted.
I'm feeling lazy with sources, but I've seen reporting that they were at least partially using Ardupilot for autonomous control, and likely were moving slower since they were tethered fiber optic drones that can't be jammed anyway. Hence, spider's web with all the fibers on the field.