Soldiers from the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) conducted the first in a new series of counter-UAS training exercises at Camp Gruber Training Center, reflecting the rapidly growing threat posed by drones on the modern battlefield.
As drones become a regular feature of armed conflict, both for reconnaissance and attack, military units across the globe are being forced to adapt. For the Oklahoma Army National Guard’s 45th IBCT, that means putting drone survivability at the center of training.
“We cannot plan missions anymore without taking into account the UAS threat,” said Col. Khalid Hussein, commander of the 45th IBCT. “What we’re seeing now, it’s not just one or two platforms in the air. Now we’re talking about swarms, you’re talking about massing effects of drones.”
The training focused on Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 279th Infantry Regiment, who were challenged to react to a variety of drone threats during simulated combat against opposing force role players.
The drones employed included both reconnaissance models and FPV systems designed to harass and disrupt troop movements, tactics that have become increasingly common in recent conflicts.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jacob Nelson, a UAS operations officer with the brigade, emphasized the pace at which drone warfare is evolving:
“Right now the innovation cycle is about three to six weeks,” Nelson said. “It’s changing faster than we can get [tactics, training and procedures] on paper. It’s crucial to [our soldiers’] survival to be able to react and deal with this.”
While some elements of drone defense are being addressed at the strategic and technological levels, Hussein said the most immediate goal is improving frontline survivability.
“This exercise is focused on the survivability piece,” he explained. “This exercise is going to reveal our vulnerabilities… What are the effects of UAS on what we do and how we’ve been trained by doctrine.”
To meet this objective, the brigade granted wide latitude to its leaders and Soldiers to test new ideas and adapt on the fly—an intentional effort to foster innovation at every level.
“Leaders at every level have full latitude to make decisions and come up with new ideas and test things out while we’re out here,” Hussein said. “We’re looking at how do we adapt to the current threat environment and the Soldiers down to the lowest level – that’s where most of our ingenuity and innovation is going to come from.”
Soldiers were encouraged to try out both procedural adaptations and improvised countermeasures as they maneuvered under drone surveillance and attack scenarios. The aim, according to Hussein, was to simulate the unpredictable nature of the UAS threat while identifying practical ways to respond under fire.
Hussein identified “lethality and survivability” as the unit’s two primary objectives moving forward. This initial exercise is expected to feed directly into future iterations, where lessons learned will be evaluated and applied.
Brigade and state leadership plan to build on this event with follow-up training to refine successful tactics and integrate C-UAS awareness across all levels of the formation.
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Post Image Credit: Oklahoma Nationalgarde
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