US infantry’s drone-warfare experiments are getting bigger

Flying and downing drones are becoming part of many U.S. soldiers’ jobs, so over the last few weeks in Lithuania, infantry units worked to add drone warfare to their ground-combat expertise.

During the fifth iteration of Project Flytrap, a U.S. Army-NATO exercise in Europe, members of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment joined international partners in testing more than 20 pieces of equipment with Strykers and unmanned ground vehicles.

“So what I saw from the squadron level, with my main command post and these new systems, was understanding the battlefield architecture, where things are not just on the ground, but their effects in the sky,” Lt. Col. Jason Kruck, who commands 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, told reporters Thursday.

Where traditional infantry operations would send up drones to spot targets for indirect fire, they now must also have to be aware of what’s flying above them and how they might shoot it down or move around the battlefield to avoid being seen.  

“Well, now with the counter-UAS detect systems, we could identify that there is an enemy air drone coming through our sector, and then we developed new [tactics, techniques and procedures] on how we counter that,” Kruck said. “What are the options, and how does that balance between intelligence collection, the fires element—who now also has to cover down on that counter-UAS viewpoint? And then over to the maneuver side, and how that synergy between those three portions of warfighting work together.” 

This most recent exercise focused on the troop and squadron level—the cavalry equivalent of a company and battalion, the regimental executive officer said.

“So I think with each one of the Flytraps, what I think we've seen a trend of is…we're always increasing scaling,” said Maj. Galen King. “So both the level of unit that we are testing, we are also talking scaling of the amount of UAS that are flying, and then we're always increasing the realism and complexity of both the scenario and the [opposition force].”

Though his unit is still gathering lessons from 5.0, the expectation is that 6.0 will be even bigger.

“We will move beyond the troop and the squadron headquarters that we were really focused on this time and continue to create an environment with a more realistic enemy, which is flying more UAS, using more electronic warfare, and continuing to provide increasing amounts of this kind of multi-layered counter-UAS approach for friendly forces as part of this scenario,” King said.