A US commander says facing Ukrainian hunters helped his troops figure out how to use armor in a drone-heavy fight

A US Army commandant wrote successful a caller sentiment article that a caller combat training workout against Ukrainian soldiers showed that armor for illustration infantry fighting vehicles and tanks tin still past and make a quality connected battlefields swarming pinch drones, but troops person to beryllium capable to adapt, to flexibly alteration really they move, hide, and fight.

During the simulated battle, his troops saw really persistent drone surveillance exposed their movements and put their combat vehicles astatine risk. But the soldiers besides learned and adapted, the commandant said.

On Friday, Capt. Allan W. Watson, the commandant of Blackhawk Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, wrote an op-ed successful Task and Purpose astir an April exercise. The exercise, held astatine Hohenfels Training Area successful Germany, pit Watson's soldiers against Hohenfels' dedicated guidance force, the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, pinch support from the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Force's 412 Regiment.

The Ukrainian unit, known arsenic "Nemesis," brought existent combat acquisition fighting pinch and against drones to the training, presenting a demanding trial for American soldiers. Reconnaissance drones tracked their movements, and US forces didn't person the counter-drone capabilities they wanted, Watson wrote.

Watson's soldiers responded by changing really they utilized their armored vehicles. They hid their Bradleys successful gullies and among the trees, leveraged the terrain to disguise their maneuvers, avoided predictable routes that they knew the Ukrainian hunters expected them to try, and deliberately considered really the unit looked to overhead drones.

"More than once," he wrote, "I recovered myself opinionated sideways successful the turret of our Bradley, barking orders arsenic our platoons traversed 40-degree slopes, uncovering caller routes to an objective."

"The force still recovered us," Watson wrote successful the op-ed. But "even pinch drone reconnaissance, the force had to usage accepted crushed reconnaissance and infiltration techniques. While a drone could place america from above, only troops connected the crushed could utilization the information."

Throughout the fight, the US forces mislaid Bradleys and tanks, which Watson said was expected successful a high-pressure arena for illustration this, an workout meant to lucifer a existent equipped conflict.

For Watson, those losses didn't condemn his armored assets to irrelevance; rather, the training workout demonstrated that armor still provides tremendously valuable mobility, protection, and firepower arsenic agelong arsenic it is put to usage pinch the drone threat successful mind.

"Our armor did not make america much vulnerable," he wrote, "it made america mobile, protected, and dangerous."

Officials and apical warfare watchers person debated the worth of armored vehicles against drones and uncrewed systems since the opening of the Ukraine war, arsenic reports from the beforehand and video footage of drones blowing up tanks and armor crossed the battlefield circulated online.

The asymmetric threat raised concerns that the proliferation of inexpensive drones, some surveillance and attack, had made dense armor excessively vulnerable, making it little applicable for early fights.

Watson's relationship of his experiences paints a much analyzable picture, acknowledging that uncrewed systems correspond a increasing threat to armored combat vehicles but emphasizing that the threat hasn't yet made them obsolete. The statement goes on.