The US military has been caught flat-footed on so many fronts and at so many different times. The stories are familiar to our readers. In the post-Vietnam era, divestment of counterinsurgency capability left the DoD abjectly unprepared for Afghanistan and post-invasion Iraq (aside from a brief Persian Gulf hiatus). An improvised focus on the dual CENTCOM missions then caused the DoD to whiff on two decades featuring the entirely predictable and public rise of the People’s Liberation Army. US missile technology languished during this time, stymied by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Moscow and Beijing sprinted ahead in hypersonics and mid-range missiles.
How have senior military and civilian leaders adjusted? Very little, if at all. There has been no accountability for the lack of preparation to meet the China challenge, no accountability for total failure in Afghanistan, no accountability for equipping all services across the force with extremely short-ranged weapons, and no accountability for the state of the US military’s magazine (ammunition levels).
Short-sighted generals and admirals continue to cruise along while very few Americans know much about the government civilian senior executive service (SES) employees who do much of the decision-making within the department. Even less is known about the DoD acquisitions process outside of major programs such as the F-35. There are great Americans in the DoD. But the performance of DoD leadership has been pathetic since the post-Gulf War nineties.
While this article could focus on any of a thousand points of weakness in today’s DoD: the role of the aircraft carrier, the US Army’s operational philosophy and design for conflict in the Pacific, the US Navy’s fleet size, etc. But today, Vermilion will focus on drones.
The various services of the US military (especially the Army and Marine Corps) need to drop their pencils and begin considering how best to integrate tactical drones. Drones should be issued at every echelon from fireteam to division and corps. This is an urgent issue more important than pay, promotions, bonuses, appointments, traditional weapons systems, or other modernization priorities which take serious investment to come to fruition (hypersonics).
Drones are revolutionizing ground combat in Ukraine in ways similar to the machine gun and tank of WWI. The US military can’t afford to be left behind like it has been on hypersonics, shipyards, intermediate range missiles, AI warfare, and amphibious vehicles.
Drones allow ground forces to invert the cost curve against their opponents much the same way missile forces have against platforms in the last decade. For around $100,000 (Rough guess for the cost of an AeroVironment Switchblade 600), an infantryman is now able to destroy a tank costing anywhere from about $3 million (T-72B3) to $24 million (M1A2 SepV3).
Footage of a Ukrainian drone strike against Russian tanks. This is an inexpensive model likely around the $400 range. Even at such a low cost, the drone’s small munition immobilized one of the tanks, causing a second tank to attempt tow. That is when the second strike (pictured above) occurred, narrowly missing the crew cupola.
For contrast, the price of a modern FGM-148 Javelin produced by RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Lockheed Martin at current ammunition batch contract purchase rates is roughly $500,000 for both missile and launch unit.
This is not to say that drones are always as effective as prime defense contractor solutions. In 2021, RTX/Lockheed claimed a 94% engagement success rate with the Javelin over thousands of engagements. It is unlikely that drones are that successful on a per-engagement basis. RTX/Lockheed are surely collecting more data in the course of the Ukraine War to further refine the Javelin.
Still, the Ukrainians and Russians have utilized heavy quadcopters and hexcopters as “bombers,” dropping everything from heavy mortar rounds to jerry-rigged anti-tank mines. Cost per engagement is drastically lower than a Javelin or even the Switchblade 600, especially when one considers that many of these munitions are simply Soviet legacy surplus which would otherwise collect dust.
Aside from the above discussion on armored warfare, it is equally clear from the Ukraine War that a $400 drone can end an infantryman even with full body armor / SAPI plates. This should cause great consternation to the Pentagon as well as allies and partners. Nearly the entire DoD force structure model is geared towards high quality and not cheap quantity.
American infantrymen are no different. US infantry forces are highly trained, meaning they are:
Capable of employing a wide range of weapons systems (rifles, carbines, pistols, machine guns of all types, mortars, precision rifles, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, missile launchers, demo, common user land transportation, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, amphibious combat vehicles etc).
Often multi-domain. American infantry commonly train in air assault (helicopters), airborne (parachute), amphibious, and riverine (boats) operations. Even in single domain operations, US infantry display consistently high expertise in light infantry and mechanized roles.
Capable of complex communications with subordinate, lateral, and higher units. This includes conducting dynamic close air support and coordinating with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets.
Highly expeditionary, meaning that even US National Guard and reserve units are prepared to deploy to the other side of the world to conduct operations.
Equipped with a wide range of gear that greatly increases every individual infantry squad’s effectiveness. This includes effective body armor, personal radios, optics, night vision systems, thermal optics, long distance radios to communicate with headquarters and aircraft, battlefield computers, cameras, signaling devices, IR markers, etc.
These attributes are worth their weight in gold and are not areas in which Washington’s Russian or Chinese adversaries have invested significant resources. This means that on a per-infantryman basis, Americans have a significant advantage at the eye-level tactical war. The inverse is also true, that American forces lose more capability per casualty than their adversaries.
Ukrainian drone dropping munitions into a Russian trench position.
Unfortunately for the above American force structure philosophy, Russians and Ukrainians are using dirt cheap drone systems that cost a few hundred dollars to ravage each other in the mud. From a Ukrainian partner discussing first-person-view (FPV) drones:
These tactics and technologies will certainly proliferate, creating a higher threat environment for American boots on the ground. Not only will US adversaries field these systems during conventional war, but irregular adversaries are sure to field these systems during future counterinsurgency operations.
Ultimately US industry will be asked to create something it is generally poor at producing: a good-enough weapon at scale for a low price. Both the DoD and the industrial base prefer their systems to be few and exquisite, which defeats the purpose of tactical level drone warfare.
Solutions
The Army and Marine Corps should start cooperatively by each selecting a single experimental brigade/regiment to spearhead the development of drone doctrine and employment in cross coordination with both Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC).
Fire Team & Squad Drone
Drones should be issued to every fireteam, and experiments are already being conducted in this realm. A good example is the super lightweight and versatile D40 from Australia. Each drone weighs 0.6lbs and can be thrown or shot out of a 40mm grenade launcher to begin flight. This hand-sized drone can assist with ISR, optics, comms relay, and marking tasks.
A U.S. Marine training with a Drone40, USMC/Pfc. Sarah Pysher
The mission envelope for a Drone40 type of capability should be further expanded to include lethal strike. There is no reason a 40mm drone payload can’t be designed, which could be fired from a 40mm grenade launcher and then guided to the target like an FPV drone. A 40mm payload deployed by a fireteam is capable of suppressing or destroying a squad-level strongpoint or C2 node.
Drones at this echelon are more like ammunition: cheap, expendable, and carried in mass. Quantity is important because it is clear from the Ukraine battlefield that drones are best employed at least in sections of 2 to provide C2, troubleshooting, and bomb damage assessment (BDA).
Since the modern drone threat is high and growing, echelons at this level also must carry anti-drone equipment. This should include capabilities like automatic shotguns loaded with special anti-drone rounds, dronebuster EW tools, and some type of counter-air drone.
Dronebuster system training
Platoon & Company Drone
Platoon and company drones need to satisfy not only lower echelon requirements, but enhanced capabilities required to conduct integration and execution of combined arms warfare. Comms relay drones with significant range, EW hardening, and encrypted datalinks are required to assure combined arms communications between air, ground, and sea units.
These drones will be larger and require more battery/energy. Lethal strike drones at this level also should be capable of destroying significant armored vehicles and fortifications. Drones armed with white phosphorous injectors, flamethrowers, and/or thermobaric munitions would be capable of applying precision effects against dug-in enemies.
In the defense, drone-adjacent and drone-enabled technology like remote-controlled machine guns and robotic sentry dogs would greatly increase the awareness and effectiveness of defensive operations.
Drone defense at this level would also have to be robust, with the equipment to sense the air and ground environment for drone signatures (and relay this to squads), and kinetic kill missiles and drones to take down enemy drones.
Further Counter-Drone Capabilities
Flak guns (anti-aircraft artillery [AAA]) are coming back into vogue for c-UAS applications. These capabilities are becoming known as very-short-range air defense (VSHORAD), a good example being the TERRAHAWK.
TERRAHAWK VSHORAD pallet offloading. To the left is a 30mm autocannon, guided by the optics and radar system on the right side of the pallet.
A smaller format system like Slinger should be integrated onto any applicable US ground vehicle including the JLTV, 7-ton, or even ACV/Stryker/Bradley/Abrams armored vehicles. A widely distributed slinger-type capability would keep US forces well protected from endemic drone threats.
Another system for drone electrmagnetic warfare should also be fielded, and also mountable ground-vehicle agnostic. This system should have radar, optics, microphones, and passive RF sensors to detect (find), identify (friend or foe), classify (what kind of drone) enemy drones and communicate that information to subsystems able to respond.
In conclusion, DoD acquisitions should begin a tactical level drone sprint program. The evaluators should be the operational forces, not civilians in test and evaluation billets. Each sprint should identify and field test a capability for 4 months, then use that capability as a baseline to improve from. While this article has focused on fireteam to battalion drones in a ground forces construct, just as important are aviation unmanned wingman systems and naval unmanned surface vessel escorts.