David Hambling points to a number of videos released by Ukrainian forces that show FPV lurk-and-strike ambush tactics in action:
The technique is used behind Russian lines to strike vehicles travelling on supply routes and seems to be used as a way to interdict logistics – and also for targeted assassinations.
This technique may have been adopted as a way to get around the short flight time of FPVs, which typically fly for 20 minutes or less and cannot wait for targets.
[…]
What is clear from this is that all three FPVs were in the ambush area, and the operators found it worthwhile to expend three on a low-value target which was not carrying passengers or cargo. In Russia the Desertcross costs around $23,000; the FPVs are around $500 each but availability rather than cost would likely be the deciding factor. Nobody wastes ammo when it is scarce, however cheap it might be.
[…]
These perch-and-wait ambushes are interesting for what they do not show as much as for what they do.
There is no indication how the drones reached their ambush spots. Battery life is the big issue; the drones might have flown there under their own power and counted on having enough juice left for the waiting period and the ambush. But they may have been delivered by drone. Wild Hornets Queen Hornet has been shown delivering FPVs and acting as a flying relay station to increase control range. And when British PM Keir Starmer visited Ukraine recently, he was shown two FPV carriers, one a fixed-wing drone, the other a large multicopter.
Ukrainian forces are increasingly using drones to lay anti-tank mines on roads behind Russian lines. Mines are relatively easy to remove; drones which may be some distance from the road and can be relocated (or target anyone attempting to remove them) may be more challenging.
I have seen where the Russians have their fiber cable drones perch-and-wait for targets. They are not jammable, but their tether is finite in length and prone to snagging. Perch-and-wait gives them the best of both worlds (though a spotter drone above is useful).
Yes, drones are more accurately modeled as short-lived, vastly more capable mines than as fighters, bombers, artillery, or rifles. The next great innovations will be in weatherproofing, hibernation duration, and fully autonomous friend-or-foe target identification. The “stealth” characteristic of drones is in the nature of ambush: length of time spent waiting before activation, distance to target, and speed of drone. Observability in flight is not irrelevant but is relatively unimportant.