The US Armed Forces have launched a major overhaul of their personnel training system, drawing on the realities of the current war in Ukraine. It was reported by CBS News.
A key focus has been training soldiers to engage in aerial combat between drones. Last week at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division practiced destroying enemy targets using specialized interceptor drones for the first time. The main idea behind the exercises is to teach infantry to eliminate small aerial targets quickly and, most importantly, as cheaply as possible.
The primary weapon at the training range was the Bumblebee drone. Its first version has already been rigorously tested in thousands of combat missions in Ukraine, and the updated V2 model is now equipped with an automatic guidance system. Lieutenant Colonel Alex Morse, who oversees procurement for the task force, explained that the US Army is currently trying to address the critical issue of the “cost curve.” According to him, using expensive air defense missiles against cheap attack drones is economically unfeasible, so they plan to reduce the cost of the new interceptors to a few thousand dollars. “There's a cost curve challenge, the offensive drones being used versus what we're using to shoot them down,” Morse emphasized.
The training itself resembles a high-tech hunt: soldiers use laptops to coordinate the movement of their drones, track enemy targets, and direct their drones to intercept them, destroying the target through direct collision. Sergeant Major Kellen Rowley emphasized that such skills are entirely new to US units but critically necessary in modern conflict. “They pick up the skills necessary to do drone-on-drone combat,” he noted, commenting on the training.
These exercises are just part of the Pentagon’s global initiative to modernize the military. This year’s US budget allocates a record USD 75 billion for the development of drone technologies and defenses against them. Following successful testing in North Carolina, similar training programs are planned for implementation at all key US military facilities, including bases in the Middle East, where the threat from small UAVs is becoming increasingly pressing.
As a reminder, in early March, the US employed Ukrainian tactics involving “cheap attack drones” for the first time during Operation Epic Fury.
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