The US Army is preparing to wind down its drone assault battalion in an unexpected “back to basics” reversal, a decision critics have called “deeply regretful and dangerous.”
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the Army said it is moving away from a battalion dedicated to testing drones and ground robots.
The shift follows the unit’s participation in a “major exercise” held in Germany during August and September, according to the outlet.
After submitting its findings to the Army for possible use in future experiments, the concept is expected to be shelved and the unit will return to its “core warfighting tasks as an airborne infantry battalion,” an Army official told the Journal.
General Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s acting chief of staff, described the decision to the outlet as part of a broader “back to basics” approach.
LaNeve took over after General Randy George, who had been a key supporter of the robotics effort, was dismissed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in April. LaNeve had earlier worked as Hegseth’s senior military assistant at the Pentagon, the New York Times reported.
The drone-assault battalion was created against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, where drone warfare has become one of the conflict’s defining and most effective tactics.
Mykhailo Fedorov has praised Ukraine’s expanding defense technology sector as a “global epicenter for military technological innovation,” the New Voice of Ukraine reported.
General Christopher LaNeve (pictured), acting chief of staff of the US Army, said the service would be phasing out its drone-assault battalion
LaNeve declared that the Army would be shifting its focus to get ‘back to basics’
LaNeve replaced General Randy George, pictured, who championed the robotic initiative
‘Ukraine has become the drone capital of the world… We are writing the doctrine of a new global security system based on cheap, autonomous technologies that can protect even a small country from a massive threat,’ he said, according to the outlet.
‘Today, reaching the first line takes 7 to 12 days because of drone density…We will reach a stage where autonomous drones will fight autonomous drones. Frontline robotization will be total.’
As Ukraine has championed success, Michael O’Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution, slammed the Army’s decision to scale-back their exploration of drone-warfare.
‘Ukraine has essentially revolutionized the close fight,’ he told the Journal. ‘General George was starting to get that, and any setback in what he was doing would be deeply regretful and dangerous.’
Earlier this year, experts showed concern over Iranian attack drones potentially slipping through US defenses.
Brett Velicovich, a former US Army intelligence and special operations soldier who spent years using drones to hunt ISIS leaders before founding drone company PowerUs, said the threat comes from a new type of warfare that the US is still struggling to defend against.
‘These new asymmetric threats, where you’ve got low-cost, cheap, small drones, in some cases, that are able to be sent in massive waves, don’t have the same signature of an intercontinental ballistic missile,’ Velicovich explained in March.
Iran has spent years building a massive arsenal of so-called ‘kamikaze drones,’ which are designed to crash into targets with explosive payloads.
Mykhailo Fedorov, pictured, the former Minister of Defense in Ukraine, has championed the use of drones in the defense industry
A spokesperson for the Army said it ‘is committed to accelerating US military drone dominance to meet the demands of large-scale combat operations’
‘They got a head start on us in terms of producing and manufacturing low-cost long-range attack drones,’ Velicovich said. ‘They’ve been preparing for this for a while.’
Around the same time, a leaked federal alert shared a warning over a potential drone strike from Iran on California.
‘This FBI announcement is a wake-up call to shake the tree a bit and help people understand that we do have some gaps in our defenses, and we need to fix those gaps before an American gets killed,’ Velicovich added.
However, the Army did not divulge their future plans to explore the modern-warfare tactic once the drone-assault battalion was phased out, the Journal reported.
A spokesperson for the Army told the outlet that it ‘is committed to accelerating US military drone dominance to meet the demands of large-scale combat operations.’
‘We rigorously test a wide variety of unmanned and counter-unmanned technologies in the field. Ultimately, these aerial systems are enablers that support our soldiers,’ they added.
A spokesperson for LaNeve declined the Journal’s request for comment.
A memo sent out by LaNeve on Wednesday told the force that the US Army ‘must be prepared to overcome the most complex challenges our adversaries can impose and master an operational environment that looks fundamentally different from the battlefields of yesterday.’
An attached document, titled Army Azimuth, saw LaNeve vow that the service would continue to develop and implement units dedicated to advancing cyber and electronic warfare as well as artificial intelligence technologies, the outlet reported.
The Daily Mail reached out to the US Army and the Department of War for comment.
