Army uses “transformation in contact” to make arguments for new weapons and formation decisions

A U.S. Army soldier stands in front of a command post during the 101st Airborne Division's rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center on August 22, 2024. (Breaking Defense/Ashley Roque).

FORT JOHNSON, Louisiana — After a 500-mile airborne assault from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to a wooded training area in Louisiana, Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division spent much of August testing new technologies and formations against an opposing force known as Geronimo.

The first verdict: More equipment is needed to prepare for a drone-infested battlefield, while the division must rethink its logistical footprint for an island-hopping campaign in the Indo-Pacific.

“We simply do not have the density or quality of our defense systems [unmanned aerial systems] that we would really need … for the future fight,” Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 101st Regiment, told reporters on August 22.

“I believe we are moving in the right direction and that the limited capacity we have is better than before, but we just don't have the density we would like,” he later added.

Likewise, Sylvia said he left the event knowing that when preparing for a long-range air strike in an area like the Indo-Pacific, his division must be prepared to better distribute its forward arming and refueling points – which is more of a training and manning task.

Sylvia learned her first homework nine days after starting her rotation at J.oint Readiness Training Center, JRTC for short. The The 2nd Brigade Combat Team is part of the Army's new “Transformation in Contact” initiative, which aims to more quickly get feedback from Soldiers on new equipment, figure out how to use it in formations and support leadership decisions. One of those key decision makers is Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, who hosted nearly a dozen reporters for a brief visit to the division last week toward the end of the training event.

“We must provide the best army we can [can] with the people we have, with the budget we have,” George told reporters. “That will require difficult decisions to say what we will not do [do].”

“Our soldiers who are out there applying this will tell us what … [are] not the best systems,” added the four-star general.

Although it will take some time to gather observations from the JRTC rotations and decide how to proceed, Army officers and soldiers there provided insight into the new technology and use cases being explored.

On the C-UAS front, for example, Soldiers from the 101st tested handheld options such as Dronebuster and DroneDefender to attack UAS at distances of up to about 750 meters.

“These are … completely new skills for us that we are still integrating and learning from and that will determine how we reorganize ourselves,” Sylvia said.

And while there is still a shortage of operational options, Col. Matthew Hardman, commander of the JRTC's operations group, noted that the learnings go beyond new capabilities to include concealing soldiers' locations through dispersion, camouflage, noise and light discipline, and electromagnetic signature discipline.

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution to combating unmanned aerial vehicles,” Sylvia said, adding “We cannot [just] Count on it…get the laser out and everything will be fine.”

While the growing threat from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) is a hot topic for the Army, it is also keeping an eye on the threat from electronic warfare and considering how to use it to its advantage, possibly with the help of drones.

Part of that equation revolves around testing smaller command posts that can be set up in 15 minutes and dismantled in the same amount of time. To minimize or completely eliminate the post's electromagnetic signature, the Army places “antenna farms” up to two kilometers apart and then connects them together with a fiber optic cable. If the enemy detects radiation, it is supposed to hit the antenna farm, not the soldiers in the camouflaged command post.

An antenna farm is set up away from the soldiers in the command post. (Breaking Defense/ Ashley Roque)

As commanders like George keep an eye on the conflicts of today and tomorrow, they are rapidly testing offensive and defensive electronic warfare capabilities. One cheaper option that has shown promise during recent training is the “Raspberry Pi” — small single-board computers — that was used as both a Decoy to lure the enemy force out of hiding and for offensive operations.

Sylvia explained that after the acquisition the commercially available Circuit boards that soldiers fThey consisted of “a few dozen” clusters designed to serve as deception maneuvers for command posts.

Then, when Geronimo, the opposing force, fired a heavy volley at these Raspberry Pi dummies, it “uncloaked” the opposing force’s position in the forest and allowed the soldiers of the 101st Infantry Division to point their weapons in that direction.

Soldiers trudging through the trees and swamps also used the Raspberry Pis for assault operations. After programming the boards and pairing them with a standard power bank and a 3D-printed carrying case, they attached the case to the bottom of a UAS.

“Then [flew] on positions to identify the electromagnetic signature,” said the two-star general.

“As soon as you have a collection of these [service set identifier] Using the SSIDs, you can predict whether or not you have identified a command post and then issue a fire order,” he added.

In addition, other UAS techniques were also tested, including a new “artificial intelligence” function designed to identify enemy vehicles, generate a fire order and send it back via SMS to the soldiers, who then decide on the next course of action. If all goes well, the UAS can continue to monitor the target and make adjustments to the mission if necessary.

While the new weapons and technologies were easier to showcase for the Army, a central part of this month’s training event revolved around testing improvements to the network – aptly named C2 Fix – to make improvements and optimizations. The service hopes that the changes made under this initiative will be enough to ensure soldiers can communicate and fight on today's battlefield, while simultaneously launching a new network under the C2 Next prototyping umbrella.

In addition to ensuring the soldiers' ability to communicate, the service also hopes to provide maneuver commanders with the necessary equipment, including a common operating picture. And a big part of that is finding ways to integrate new, smaller C-UAS into the C2 architecture, so Alex Miller, a chief technology officer.

“We've been working on what unmanned aircraft defense means as part of an integrated air and missile defense,” Miller told reporters last week.

“We've had bad C2 for 30 years. What comes after that is making sure we can integrate all of our sensors and effectors so we have a combined attack and defense strategy for fires,” he added.