Small drones capable of constantly keeping an eye on soldiers are changing the modern battlefield.It’s a developing problem that underscores how “scary” future wars may be, a US Army officer said.Business Insider recently traveled to Fort Sill, where American troops are learning how to defeat this threat.
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It seems like a never-ending story in Ukraine. A small drone drops explosives on soldiers below or slams into an armored vehicle and blows up. Social media has been flooded with scenes from such attacks.Drones — cheap, commercial ones in particular — are a terrifying new reality that is reshaping the modern battlefield in unprecedented ways.”You have to assume you’re being watched at all times,” Lt. Col. Moseph Sauda, a US Army officer training American service members to defeat enemy drone systems, told Business Insider in an interview.Sauda is the director of the Joint C-sUAS (Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft System) University, or JCU, a new US Army initiative at Fort Sill where American troops are learning how to identify, engage, and neutralize potentially hostile drones. BI observed some of the training programs firsthand during a visit to the facility in southwest Oklahoma.
A Ukrainian soldier directs a drone during attacks on Russian military positions near Bakhmut on June 28, 2023.
Ercin Erturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The utilization of weaponized commercial drones in combat goes back nearly a decade, when the Islamic State used small aircraft to cause headaches for US and partner forces in the Middle East.This threat, however, has been put on display for the whole world to see throughout Russia’s war against Ukraine. Both sides in this conflict have relied on cheap drones of all shapes, sizes, and capabilities to undertake a myriad of tasks and generally wreak havoc on the battlefield.Videos captured from these drones has shown the world death and destruction of both men and equipment on a massive scale, often asymmetrically beyond their value. Drone usage has, in many cases, also stripped both Kyiv and Moscow of a crucial element: secrecy.The constant surveillance that drones can offer is forcing militaries to change how they move through the battlespace and pushing troops to consider new measures of detection and protection, Sauda said.But the problem obviously doesn’t stop with observation, as these aircraft can deliver varying levels of explosive payloads, becoming quite deadly.
A Ukrainian drone operator from the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade tests new military equipment, including FPV drones on a training area in the Donetsk Oblast on Aug. 3, 2023.
Wojciech Grzedzinski/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“You look at doctrine for any military around the world, one of the things you don’t want to do is let the enemy see what you’re doing,” Sauda said. “That’s called maintaining security and the element of surprise.””Well,” he said, “these drones have essentially taken away your ability to hide.”Indeed, one of the lessons that the US military is drawing from overseas, specifically in Ukraine, is a heightened emphasis on cover and concealment tactics, something that’s being taught all the way down at the boot camp level, said Lt. Col. Adam Schultz, the commander of a basic training battalion at Fort Sill.Army leadership has been working to implement drones into basic training, employing practices like flying the aircraft above soldiers, who can then learn how to react to — and disappear from — the aerial threat, Schultz told BI in an interview.”If you are not concealing yourself, if you’re not covering yourself, your survivability decreases very rapidly,” he said.
A screenshot from a video appearing to show Russia using a Chinese-made Desertcross 1000-3 all-terrain vehicle in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s 60th Mechanized Brigade/Facebook
It is a new reality for the battlefields of today and tomorrow — with exceedingly grim implications.”The future of warfare is scary,” Sauda said. “The pace of technological developments for these types of threats is going to out-race your ability to create things to counter them.”Figuring out how best to counter the drone threat is what the JCU is hoping to accomplish. Since October, hundreds of US troops have flocked to Fort Sill for two-week courses that help them understand drones and practice different methods of defeating the threat.One part of training involves students using two pieces of handheld equipment in the Army’s counter-drone inventory, the Dronebuster and the Smart Shooter, to engage drones on a firing range using both electronic and kinetic methods.
Two Wisconsin National Guardsmen identify drones with their instructor at Fort Sill.
Jake Epstein/Business Insider
The Dronebuster is an electronic warfare system that severs the link between a drone and its operator when pointed at the aircraft. A Smart Shooter system is a rifle equipped with a special optic that can track the drone, calculate its trajectory, and inform the user when they have a solid chance of hitting the aircraft with a conventional bullet. (Students at the JCU shoot balloons tied to the drones because its more cost-effective and provides more effective training.)The Dronebuster and Smart Shooter systems, which work best when used in tandem, are just two of the tools that students at the JCU are learning how to use. Training, for example, also includes other assets like early-warning radars. The idea is that defeating drones likely requires a much larger effort than just one single system, but rather a collection of initiatives.
A Wisconsin National Guardsman takes aim with a Smart Shooter.
Jake Epstein/Business Insider
“There’s no silver bullet,” Sauda said. “There’s no one machine you’re going to buy and it’s the end-all solution to all things drones. We need to accept that and instead remain agile and continue to come together and think and work with each other.”Looking forward, Sauda said he believes the US military can still use the tools in its arsenal to dominate on the battlefield, where the threat of small drones may be omnipresent. However, he cautioned, the Pentagon will have to keep pace with the rapidly developing threat.”If we had to fight and win today in this current environment, with what’s going on in flying, we would still win,” he said. “But the enemy is still going to evolve.”
