The US Army is watching the drone war in Ukraine and thinking up innovative ways to teach new soldiers how they can survive this threat in future fights.
One way the Army is preparing soldiers is by filming recruits in basic training from above and then showing them the footage to assess their ability to hide from a potential enemy.
“What you learn from what’s occurring in Ukraine is you cannot move without being seen,” Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said during an episode of the “War on the Rocks” podcast last month, adding that the military needs to be “leaner” and better at hiding.
Driscoll said that he had recently visited South Carolina’s Fort Jackson, one of four main bases where the Army does basic combat training, and saw leadership put drones in the sky to survey troops below.
“These are for soldiers that have been in for seven weeks, and they are showing them, ‘Hey, this is what you look like from the air. You have either done a good job providing top cover and camouflage, or you have not,'” Driscoll said. “At the end of each of their exercises, they go review the drone footage, which was just incredible to see.”
The exercise gives US soldiers a small taste of the battlefield in Ukraine, where troops on both sides are under the constant watchful eye of small, quadcopter drones that could suddenly turn deadly by dropping explosives below or flying into a target and detonating.
Like other branches of the military, the Army recognizes the seriousness of the drone threat and acknowledges that uncrewed systems are changing warfare. It is trying to keep pace with the speed of innovation, accelerated as Ukraine and Russia race to introduce new technology and innovations onto the battlefield.
With drones poised to play an increasingly significant role in future conflicts, the Army is coming to terms with how to ensure new generations of soldiers are prepared to meet the threat environment.
Lt. Gen. David Francis, commanding general of the Army’s Center for Initial Military Training, told Business Insider in an interview this month that one of the most “significant things” his program has done is introduce drones into basic training to train new recruits on how to react to this technology.
Francis said that the idea is to get these civilians-turned-soldiers to think about the battlefield as a three-dimensional space and expose them to the new threat that they’d likely face in future combat scenarios.
The Army introduced drone training at all of its training centers over 18 months ago. Beyond Fort Jackson, these sites include Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Sill in Oklahoma, and Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
Lt. Col. Stephen Deuble, commander of 2nd Squadron, 15th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Benning, said the base has greatly scaled up its drone training after recognizing the major role they play in combat. Previously, new recruits received a brief overview on drones that lasted only a few hours; now, they receive over 50 hours of training.
The extensive training “reinforces that concept that the enemy is not just in front of you, but you have to look up, and they’re in the air domain,” Deuble told BI. He said that drones are used at Fort Benning in a teaching role and as an after-action tool similar to what Driscoll observed at Fort Jackson.
Training is sometimes designed to be complex. At Fort Benning, for instance, leadership isn’t just exposing soldiers to a small drone flying in the air — they are combining it with a realistic battlefield scenario, such as simulating a precision drone strike on an armored vehicle.
Watching the Ukraine war, Francis said that the Army is learning that its soldiers could be facing “constant surveillance” and the consistent threat of indirect fire from armed drones or artillery in a conflict of their own. For these reasons, he said, it’s important that US troops are learning early on how to be aware and resilient on the battlefield.
“Knowing that you’re always being watched — it takes a toll on folks,” he said. “We are increasing the rigor in our basic training right now to provide that resiliency that it’s going to take to operate in an environment where you are constantly under threat.”
Teaching soldiers how to respond to drones is one of the many ways that the military is taking lessons learned from the Ukraine war and using them to inform training. The US has also put more attention on counter-drone efforts and using drones for offensive missions.
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