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Cheap drone beats expensive tank.
Ukrainian drone operators inflicted 70% of an American tank brigade’s casualties in a major military exercise, the commander has revealed — suggesting the new form of warfare could be deadly for American troops in the next conflict.
A newly published overview of the military drills held in Germany over the spring demonstrated the devastation Ukraine’s drone unit was capable of after years of experience fighting against Russia.
“The Russo-Ukrainian war is the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War, and over the past four years, it has fundamentally changed today’s character of war,” Col. Michael Ziegelhofer, commander of the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, wrote.
The $500 Ukrainian drones went up against the best American heavy armor — including fully upgraded $25 million M1A2 Abrams tanks and M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicles.
The war games, held in April, were largely characterized by drone warfare, with more than 750 UAV attacks recorded during the 10-day event between the US team, Greywolf, and the Ukrainian unit, Nemesis.
The onslaught of the first day — conducted by Ukraine’s 412th Regiment of Unmanned Systems Forces — quickly forced the US troops to adapt and focus on anti-drone warfare to persevere.
The US brigade enacted electronic warfare and counter-drone systems to jam the UAVs, with the troops forced to make up for the tactic’s weaknesses that left them exposed to fiber-optic first-person-view drones.
With the new systems in place and the troops splitting up their forces to overwhelm drone pilots, the US team was able to break through the enemy line, Ziegelhofer and his staff said, noting that drone related casualties fell below 30% by the end of the third day.
“Greywolf changed how it fought,” the authors concluded about their strategy.
“During Greywolf’s Combined Resolve rotation, the brigade… learned critical lessons in integrating their capabilities alongside counter-unmanned aircraft system (UAS) equipment and tactics, techniques, and procedures, which ultimately led to the brigade combat team’s success in conducting two simultaneous combined arms breaches against an expert opposing force equipped with persistent drone sense-and-strike capability,” the unit added.
The exercise highlighted how drones have become the defining weapon of modern war, with Ukraine and Russia firing hundreds of ever-evolving UAVs at each other every week.
Iran has also utilized its Shahed suicide drones, which Russia has improved upon, to attack US forces in the Middle East.
Ukraine’s drone development has left the country with a flood of requests from nations in the Middle East to help improve their UAV and counter-UAV technology.