The US Army is adding anti-drone warfare to its basic training requirements. With the proliferation of cheap drones across the world, US soldiers will now have to look up to scan for enemies.
Air Defense Artillery will be leading the effort to defeat drones, but wants every soldier to be able to take down drones. Army Times reports:
The Army wants soldiers at every level to understand the danger of small drone attacks and plans to equip units down to the squad level with devices to take down those drones.
“It’s going to become a basic soldier requirement to identify, report and in some cases react to the threat,” said Sgt. Maj. Demetrius Johnson, senior enlisted advisor for the joint counter-small unmanned aerial systems office. “It’s MOS agnostic, it’s not specific to an air defender to be able to employ these handheld systems.”
Anti drone weapons are scaling down as well. Air Defense Artillery traditionally takes down drones with missiles and guns. However, new electronic and kinetic weapons are making their way to infantrymen. C4ISRNet continues:
The first demonstration held in April 2021 at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona was focused on low-collateral interceptors.
The demonstration made it possible for the JCO to identify readily available capability. The office narrowed down the pool of low-collateral interceptors to five vendors and passed that group to the Air Force along with funding to continue evaluation and demonstration from those vendors, Gainey explained.
This is a rapid change for Army doctrine, which has traditionally needed time to adapt to new battlefield realities.
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