They're both interesting questions and well outside my ground pounding expertise.
I've been in doubt of the quick seizures of airfields and so on once you factor in a vast abundance of small light AD systems that are widely available and work quite well at the levels that para drops work at. It's getting the same way for airmobile ops IMHO. One needs to be prepared for mass casualties if one does these.
Antonov airport is a mixed story but shows how difficult these operations can be. They all seem to depend on quick breakthroughs by mechanized forces to support the air landed forces. Generally airborne forces are lightly equipped and supported (usually to the extent of available air support) and can't reach out very far to suppress counterattacking forces. That makes them very susceptible to defensive artillery destroying runways or landing aircraft.
I agree that drones, LAMs and LRPF (if its in range) can do a lot but I think the ground based relieving force is the key. If that fails like at Arnhem, the airdropped folks are toast - it's just a matter of time.
I've been mulling this over for some time and part of my strategy for northern defence is based on airborne/airmobile forces with plenty of airlanded/dropped armoured oversnow vehicles. But . . . I just can't see any other option (leaving out the air force and navy who have a big role up there) - you can't post folks up there. You probably don't want to do rotations. And even though the distances are nowhere near as far as they look on a Mercator map, they're still pretty big. We need lots of runways, caches and stagging areas and airborne trained forces probably give us the best options. Is the SOR enough? My guess is we need at least a couple of airborne battalions.
My napkin force has five all told. three regular and two reserve. Their artillery is based primarily on HIMARs and air defence with some residual M777s. And yes, lots of MANPADs, LAM, drones, etc.
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