A recent report by the RAND Corporation has found that the U.S. Army’s approach to counter-UAS training is underdeveloped and fails to prepare units for the demands of modern drone-saturated battlefields.
The study, conducted for the XVIII Airborne Corps and published under RAND’s Arroyo Center, concludes that current training programs are too narrow in focus and are not adequately integrated across units and command levels.
“Counter-UAS training needs to be integrated across echelon collective training, which includes creating opposing force (OPFOR) uncrewed aircraft systems capabilities,” the authors state.
According to the report, most U.S. units do not routinely encounter realistic drone threats until their Combat Training Center (CTC) rotations, leaving them unprepared for the kinds of drone tactics being used by adversaries.
The report emphasizes that the first time a Brigade Combat Team (BCT) often experiences a drone threat is during these rotations, noting:
“They have no OPFOR at home station to help them train for the C-UAS tasks.”
The document also highlights that adversaries such as Russia and Ukraine have rapidly scaled up their drone training programs, often producing operators with more advanced skills than their U.S. counterparts.
“Failure to train U.S. Army units on sUAS to their full capabilities (and for the C-UAS mission, the enemy’s full capabilities) puts mission success and soldier lives at risk,” the report warns.
RAND researchers found that obstacles such as restrictive airspace policies, spectrum management, property accountability concerns and limited access to trained personnel are impeding effective home-station training. These challenges, they argue, are largely beyond the control of brigade, or battalion, level commanders and require institutional changes.
The report recommends the Army move beyond basic operator proficiency and begin training leaders and staffs on how to employ and counter drones within broader combined arms operations. It also calls for the development of shared tactics, techniques, and procedures, as well as more realistic training scenarios involving adversary drones.
“Most BCTs are inadequately trained or not trained at all on almost all collective unit sUAS and C-UAS tasks,” the authors conclude, adding that the Army must treat C-UAS as a core mission and not a niche capability.
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Post Image – U.S. Army soldiers showcase EW counter-drone weapons (Post Image Credit: U.S. Army)
