Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
The US Army is using annual exercises in Germany to test drone tactics and equipment drawn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience, underlining how closely the two militaries are working as Washington tries to build drone capability into its own units.
The effort has shown how much the Army has learned from Ukraine’s use of drones in the war with Russia, but it has also exposed a larger debate inside the service over how drones should fit into future combat formations, beyond simply adding them to existing units.
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At a training ground in the Bavarian foothills, a lone American soldier stood on a dusty road with a controller before launching a small drone into the sky. The exercise was part of Saber Junction, a major US Army drill held over nearly four weeks in August and September in Germany, with the 173rd Airborne Brigade leading the American side.
Brig Gen Terry Tillis, who leads the Germany-based Army training unit, recently told reporters they have 1,900 drones and that they represent “the latest things that we’ve learned from Ukrainian efforts in this war”.
The Associated Press received rare access to the training ground and the troops taking part in the exercises, offering a look at how the United States is working with and learning from Ukraine. The effort has gained added urgency as the US tries to counter Iranian drone attacks in that conflict, now more than six months old.
US military officials have become more open about the cooperation they are receiving from Ukrainian forces, and Army leaders say progress has been made in getting drones into the hands of soldiers. But officials have not yet given a clear answer on how the Army will change its tactics for wars in which drones are a constant presence.
An Army official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said there is broad agreement that drones must be built into the force. But, the official said, leaders still have to decide how to organise ground units for drone warfare, and not just use drones to support jobs soldiers already do. The official said one-way attack drones are being integrated down to company level, but added there needs to be more than just “adding drones to an infantry battalion.”
Tillis said some soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade were sent to Ukraine at the start of this year to learn directly from a military that has been at the forefront of drone warfare since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. During the exercises, Tillis said late last month that the Ukrainians “are embedded with them, they’ll help advise, assist and then help them employ” the technology.
About a dozen Ukrainian military personnel travelled to Germany for this year’s exercise, the US Army said. They are sharing lessons on electronic warfare, drone warfare and experience from ongoing combat operations. Anthony Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer, told reporters this week that roughly 50 per cent of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s engagements with opposing troops during the exercise “were drone contact first,”.
Even as that cooperation has produced new lessons, the Army has seen a run of leadership exits involving officials who had backed these drone experiments. In April, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth removed the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen Randy George, and replaced him with Gen Christopher LaNeve. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, the service’s top civilian leader and an ally of George, also left earlier this month. Both George and Driscoll had supported rapid adaptation of the Army for drone use. Trump has named Adam Telle, a civilian leader in the US Army Corps of Engineers, as acting Army secretary.
A few weeks before Driscoll’s departure, LaNeve ordered an Army formation experimenting with drone warfare within the 173rd Airborne Brigade to stop that work and return to its role as a traditional infantry battalion after nearly a year. The Army has said that shift was always part of the plan, though there had been an expectation under the previous leadership that the battalion would continue.
The Army official said the end of the specialised unit may look like a setback, but it had never been certain that such formations would be the long-term answer. The official said the battalion’s work and the regular exchanges with Ukrainians are not aimed at copying Ukraine, but at helping the US Army work out how it would use its own drone-based formations in line with the way the American military fights. The official also said that with greater resources, the Ukrainians too would use drones differently.
Ukraine created a separate branch, the Unmanned Systems Forces, for drone warfare two years ago. But drones are now so deeply built into Ukraine’s military that they are used across units for surveillance and strikes, often alongside artillery and other conventional weapons. Miller said he has argued against putting drone knowledge into one separate organisation. “We’ve pushed back on having something like a drone corps since its inception because our theory of the case is if you centralize that in one place, what you lose is the ability to actually scale that learning and send that out to the rest of the Army,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Miller said the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s performance in the Germany exercises showed that spreading drone integration “across the brigade and across the Army was the right move.” The exercises have highlighted both how much the US Army is learning from Ukraine and how it is still deciding the best way to fold those lessons into its own future warfare plans.
With PTI Inputs
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
