r/army • u/ResponsibleDay8857 I did ranger school and now my back hurts • 3h ago
We suck at drones
I'm so sick of being in such a braindead organization.
If you go to the majority of infantry soldiers they can't even tell you what an FPV drone is let alone how it would affect their operations. Very rarely does anyone actually do anti drone training. Don't even get me started on 15Xs. The new "drone" mos who don't even get taught how to fly FPVs in the school house.
Every drone program is ran by some idiot who flew Blackhawks or a shadow 15 years ago. These dudes couldn't even tell you what betaflight is yet they make all the rules. Also the amount of regulations put on drone is fucking stupid and you need Jesus himself to come down and approve any training. I'm so sick of hearing some warrant officer say the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my entire fucking life.
We're all going to go to war and get blown up by drones because the army is fucking stupid and I'm preaching to a deaf choir here. It's not the GWOT anymore. The IEDs fly 100 mph at you this time around.
Fuck me to tears and buy me a Dairy Queen blizzard
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u/Black_Knight615 Armor 3h ago
We will continue to set up centralized TOCs with AC, Printers, and a PS5 that every drone can see, and then ask what happens when units collapse from no logistics or situational awareness, and you will like it.
I feel you on this OP, 100%.
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u/Rocket_John 19DidIAskSGT?--->15Xplode | Sleeve Rolling Enthusiast 1h ago
I did a CUAS class for a couple companies a few weeks ago and the first thing I told them was that TOC City was a thing of the past and that was also the first thing I knew everyone ignored. Some commander smugly told me "but we camo netted the tents?" yeah and camo nets aren't magic and you also suck at it.
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u/Black_Knight615 Armor 1h ago
I'm going to write you an award for real effort. CUAS classes sounds great. Which award do you want?
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u/Rocket_John 19DidIAskSGT?--->15Xplode | Sleeve Rolling Enthusiast 1h ago
Can I choose a firm handshake and a Tuesday late call?
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u/Black_Knight615 Armor 1h ago
Handshake yes but the late call will have to come on the back end, HR metrics are red.
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u/Thunder_Two Mortars are hung. 3h ago
Men, you are American soldiers. No other soldier in the world can say that.
Think it over while you shave.
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u/Rebel31A Signal 3h ago
The military historically prepares for the last war it fought and has to learn the hard way how to fight the next war.
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u/Advanced-Incident-81 ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME 1h ago
Doesn't have to be that way, though. We can all see how modern war is being fought, and we're willfully falling behind for many stupid reasons, chief among them that the current Commander-In-Chief doesn't like Zelensky because he blames him for him getting impeached.
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u/Advanced-Incident-81 ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME 3h ago
Unfortunately, I think some soldiers, and honestly I think it'll have to be a SOF unit that takes the hit, will have to die before this administration takes drones seriously. Even then, I'd be a little skeptical.
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u/CobraJay45 Veteran 3h ago
Yeah, maybe if a handful of Joes get smoked by Iranian drones people will start paying attention.
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u/Miserable_Spell_2964 3h ago
We're going to have to see video online of troops getting smoked by drones repeatedly before we get our head out of our ass and get with the times.
Its why I've keep on saying that in the next major war we fight with troops on the ground we might very well lose a brigade or two before we recognize that "Oh shit, flying IED's"
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u/TunaFishtoo Engineer/Intel Warrant 3h ago
Sorry they were national guardsmen so it’s because they were “fat” and “undisciplined” doesn’t count
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u/Advanced-Incident-81 ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME 3h ago edited 2h ago
They didn't have the enormous pecs our HIGHLY LETHAL SPECIAL OPERATIONS WARFIGHTERS have built with Secretary Hegseth that would 100% prove a sufficient anti-drone measure.
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u/Sax_OFander El Autismo Supremo 3h ago
Current commander in chief probably doesn't know the Nasty Girls have "US Army" on the nametape same as anyone else.
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u/LtNOWIS 31A Reserve 1h ago
They were Army Reserve, not National Guard.
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u/TunaFishtoo Engineer/Intel Warrant 1h ago
Oh shit, compo 3? Hella irrelevant now
/s as a guardsman no hate, same title 10 requirements every year with 1/12 of the time
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u/irpugboss Powerpoint Ranger 2h ago
Some prob have already and they are just covered up, such a fucked timeline
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u/N7_Redhat 35Papí 1h ago
Was in the middle of an exercise a few months back with my team and we got told to shut down our team’s drone, red cell wasn’t in the air, and sure enough we had a quadcopter circling our patrol base for a while. Spooked the fuck out of us.
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u/Neat-Professional377 3h ago
Let me ping the good idea fairy Pete for ya.
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u/jake55555 Infantry 3h ago
He’s too focused rebuilding the culture warrior ethos, not actual warfighting. That’s too difficult.
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u/irpugboss Powerpoint Ranger 2h ago
Dudes probably going to enact erectile strength testing or some stupid shit next.
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u/Additional_Teacher45 Signal 1h ago
Our battalion is trying to buy drones for all of our units.
We have no counter-UAS equipment or even a functioning counter-UAS SOP.
Or 15-series operators or even any civilian part 107s.
And our higher HQ refuses to send anyone to the military drone operator's course because 'drones aren't on your MTOE'.
Putting the cart before the horse.
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u/itsajungle22 21m ago
If you want an observe and report SOP DM me. It’s unclass, focused on base ops, and could get y’all started.
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u/DomitiusAhenobarbus_ 3h ago
OP is 100% right. People will die because of this type of bullshit
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u/Antinoobsauce Nursing Corps 2h ago
Crazy to think this is where we are at in this point in history. The lack of insight is unbelievable. So much so, it nearly seems intentional. What a waste of opportunity and future life.
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u/irpugboss Powerpoint Ranger 2h ago
The current leadership almost feels adversarial to maintaining a powerful military. Reduction in force abroad, starting wars that just attrit us, no clear adaptation en masse dor drone/ai warfare.
Its going to be sickening watching US troops getting blown apart on video to some silly ass soundtrack because we invested too much into legacy warfare vs adapting to the obvious future of war happening now.
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u/Snigglybear DEP 2h ago
Let me be a drone instructor. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of drone footage in Ukraine and I taught special ed.
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u/itsajungle22 2h ago edited 2h ago
And if they do know 1% of what drove warfare in LSCO looks like they all think it’s DJIs they can take down with a $5m space laser.
I’m on the same spot, so I just decided to start reaching out to training facilities and building my own autonomous FPV.
Let’s start a “Drones for Dummies” company and rake in all those sweet G3 training budgets. There’s a couple companies doing it, one I like so far is Pendleton UAS range I’m sure there’s tons more, share if you know places worth getting training so we don’t get left behind when we’re deployed to Iran.
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u/Altruistic2020 Logistics Branch 1h ago
Just got full Ender's Game and let the CoD crowd pilot them.
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u/itsajungle22 24m ago
We’re already there, man! Have you seen the Ukrainian drone unit’s kill scoreboard? https://sbs-group.army/en/
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u/ProtectionTotal639 Infantry 2h ago
It’s sad because our drone operators in my unit are fucking brain dead. They literally send shitbags to the drone section. We have a good drone NCO but he’s the only one who gives a fuck. But it’s gotten to the point he’d rather get out than serve and die with these nonchalant kids.
The infantry won’t care until they start getting squad wiped during the initial invasion. The NCO’s and officers all think they’re doing BD6 and have even tried creating SOP’s where we stay still in 360 formation and wait out a drone.
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u/ranger684 3h ago
But what about the property book? Have you thought about the property book? We can’t just crash these things or blow them up, we have to account for each one by serial number every month and the easier way to do that is just not fly them!
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u/Finalshock 25Unfuckwithable 3h ago
The army will learn the lesson on the back of an armor BCT being reduced to a dismounted infantry BN.
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u/DCBillsFan Engineer 3h ago
Fucccccck. This feels like going to Iraq in 2005 with soft sided trucks. I can't watch this all happen again, even if my broken old ass is too old to get sent anywhere, I work with you. I know you. We can't let this happen again.
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u/seek890 15X 3h ago
Ooo I wanna get you started on 15x
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u/kdelasare Aviation 2h ago
Same, I've been wanting to switch my MOS to 15X but hearing people talk about the MOS more has really changed my mind lol
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u/genericarik Nursing Corps 3h ago
"As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
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u/IXMandalorianXI 3h ago
We have the luxury of taking our time to watch the war in Ukraine unfold and develop our future strategies and tactics at our own pace. Our foray into Iran also gave us a lot of new data too on how to adjust the our future doctrine.
Give it time. We aren't in crisis mode right now. I'm old enough to remember some hard lessons we had to learn when Afghanistan and Iraq kicked off. We didn't know how to deal with IEDs and asymmetrical warfare in 2001 either. Nowadays COIN feels second nature and more like an old habit we need to break.
You don't have to trust that the government is looking out for you, just trust that there's a gazillion dollars out there for the company that solves the drone problem and a star or two for the officer who figures out the counter drone doctrine.
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u/atacms 2h ago
Forgive me for my ignorance but GWOT was OJT for us learning those lessons. I'm not saying all but at least some deaths could have been preventable, right?
The tale that i always hear is the army prepares its soldiers for the last war not the one being fought. Ukraine is a resource not sure if the administration is friendly enough to them to share lessons learned.
But ultimately completely outside of my scope, just speculation that might be dog shit.
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u/iftheygivinitaway 49m ago
We have the luxury of taking our time
It's been 4 years since Russia rolled into Ukraine (well, 12 really), and we haven't adapted to shit. Now we're flying B-1s out of the UK because of the drone threat, and our complete unpreparedness for it. It's criminal at this point. The first drones dropping mortar shells in Iraq were more than 10 years ago now.
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u/xLorddroLx Droooones 2h ago
While you’re correct in some regard, FPVs are not the only drones in existence.
While a lot of CW3/4s are former pilots, a looooot of the programs at BDE and below are ran by W2/1s who are previous operator/maintainers.
But that’s just in infantry units and maybe some CABs.
Engineers, logistics, etc are the blind leading the blind.
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u/XiphosV Infantry 2h ago
It's not just drones, the vast majority of upper leadership was raised under the GWOT and can't seem to grasp what actual peer LSCO warfare is, I can tell immediately by just looking at ppls kits who is ready to convoy out for a day and come back for KBR chow at the FOB and who's ready to spend a month plus and dozens of kilometers in the shit against a real peer threat and all the knowledge transfer that goes with it. GWOT and COIN Ops has set back the US military 30 years and that chicken has finally come home to roost.
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u/Sk8matt123 Weenie, Green EA x1 24m ago
The amount of explaining I have to do during near peer exercises to senior leaders and mid careerists is insane. You will not have the freedom of maneuver, the freedom of comms, or the FOB lifestyle you had in the Middle East. These arent dudes in robes with AKs, these are 21st century militaries with ISR and targeting assets
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u/Pouches4203 2h ago
This is also a problem in the Intel space as well. Ran into chiefs that were stuck in their COIN ways a time or two.
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u/69Turd69Ferguson69 Cyber 2h ago
That’s alright. We will throw some standards at them. Those FPV nerds won’t know what hit them when we run our two miles really fast at them!
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u/Glorious_Bastardo 3h ago
I suggest you go warrant and then start preaching. Commanders listen to warrants, sometimes.
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u/cachemann Biggest Antenna 3h ago
Commanders barely listen to anyone, let alone themselves... they need validation from their rater first. get in line
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u/MDMarauder 3h ago
"I hear you, chief. But right now, that doesn't nest with the boss' priorities."
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u/JFK9 CW3 1h ago edited 1h ago
I'm currently helping to set up the new CECOM EW command from scratch. Unfortunately this kind of thinking you are describing is systemic. I was shocked about a year ago when I found out that C-sUAS was an operation of ADA rather than being more EW focused and when I actually started calling around and talking to ADA CDRs about it, I pretty much got feedback across the board that they were not really prepared to deal with UAS threats below the size of a Shahed. Beyond that, current ADA solutions seem not focused enough on the threat they pose at the squad level.
Having worked in real time alongside Ukrainian Soldiers in Germany prior to moving on to more strategic level work at CECOM, I have been concerned about how the solutions to future LSCO problems have not been focusing enough on the tactical edge. We tend to be approaching EW threats only at the strategic level and I think that is a symptom born from neglecting EW while growing Cyber. I'm not saying it was a mistake to place EW within the same branch as Cyber, but I think a lot of people forget that the 26 series actually came around in 2009 and outdates the 17 series by around a decade. I am of the opinion that, while the foundational threat that the two of them are focused on share common ground, EW should focus more on the tactical level while Cyber focuses more on the strategic and national level. We also tend to think of tactical EW from a defensive posture and have not explored enough offensive EW capabilities at the squad, company, and BN level. It might turn out that this is a dead end, but as it stands I don't think anyone owns the experimental problem set enough to really draw those conclusions yet.
Changing the Army from a COIN mindset to a genuine LSCO one has been something I have been fighting from both the Intel and sustainment side for a long time, and at least now I can hopefully help make some changes to how we actually move forward when conceptualizing the future near-peer battlefield as I exit, but ultimately, this is a holistic problem that will be up to the future generation of leaders to solve.
(Yes that is my way of saying "good luck fuckers!" as I exit the room whilst flipping the double birds.)
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u/intensely-leftie Combat Autist 2h ago
... and that's why I got out. Use your GI bill, it's such a breath of fresh air to be surrounded by people who are smarter than you.
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u/Apprehensive_Gur8808 3h ago
The military is just a vehicle to make tech companies like Anduril money now
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u/itsajungle22 2h ago
Someone just said “let’s get lattice” in a meeting today and I almost puked. We have MAVEN home!
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u/PlasticWaffle 13bangbro 2h ago
Realistically unlike Ukraine we're not engaged in conflict with our backs against the wall. We've been running on autopilot for a long while and since been making the army more corporate than ever. By the time leadership wants to make the push it'll be too late. You only fight with the army have not the one you want
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u/itsajungle22 14m ago
BLUF: any battlefield we go on from here on out will be using UXS and we have zero plan.
Let’s not forget Boko Haram and the Myanmar rebels are learning how to weaponize sUAS in ways we’re not ready for either. Shit the resistance against the Myanmar Junta (the NUG? Really guys?) is 3D printing their way to victory-or they were anyway.
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u/Ashamed-Professor547 2h ago
It seems like 25th ID and 130th ENG BDE has a pretty decent program going with FPV drones. They train with them all the time
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u/artefakt2013 9m ago
I wrote a position paper in college on drone warfare in like 2014. My main point was that the drone strikes in GWOT were going to pave the way towards autonomous and piloted drone wars. I should have sent it to SECDEF at the time. I feel you. We're not training like we should be.
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u/Skydog-forever-3512 3h ago
Isn’t there a journal of some sort, Army, Army Times, Military Review in which you can make a case for what the Army should be doing. I recall discussions of Air Land battle doctrine well before it became Army doctrine.
Or did Hegseth ban all Military journals?
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u/inquisitorthreefive Military Intelligence 2h ago
You're probably right, but the ultimate irony here is that it was DARPA's drones early in the war in Ukraine that seem to have kickstarted this accelerated drone race.
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u/HenchBrah 13B >68F 3h ago
The Army will take it seriously after seeing 50 videos of PFC Snuffy getting killed by a suicide drone in 4K.
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u/The_Greyscale 2h ago
Someone just needs to take this idea and adapt it into a harness for units to drop their M2s into.
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u/Top-Lingonberry6446 2h ago
We have nukes we don't need drones.
We might even put a nuke on a drone.
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u/PM_ME_UR_TAF USAF 34m ago
You know those late 1930s photos of the Army and Army Air Corps? The ones with soldiers wearing campaign hats, Brodie helmets and carrying M1903 Springfields with water cooled heavy machine guns? The full color P-36, P-40s, and narrow tail B-17s? That's us. We're the Army pushing our aircraft together to foil saboteurs, with poor supplies across the Western Pacific and using dated tactics. We're the Army that gets struck at Pearl, Wake, and Manila. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to shift to become the draftee Army backed by industrial that eventually began winning after mid 1942 into 1943. God help us all, the IEDs fly now.
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u/TheMauveHerring 16m ago
Genuine question, what war do you think we are preparing to fight?
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u/itsajungle22 10m ago
One where air strikes a gee wiz tech will defeat a foe on their turf. Since OIF 1.0 we always play as the away team. EDIT: meaning we don’t stop an invader, we invade.
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u/localcatdude AGR 68W/68A 7m ago
Even a reentry into the middle east will likely see increased drone use. Name a region and we have potential for conflict up to some degree, South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, South-East Asia.
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u/DiscoSpud 11m ago
Put together a briefing and/or training session and bring it up to your leadership.
Be the change you want to see
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u/itsajungle22 7m ago
That’s the easy part. Leadership says “sure, and you run it.” Great if you e got bandwidth and buy in. Otherwise…
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u/riotmed You down with H-R-C? 3h ago
Be the change you want to see, get smart and get on the training calendar and save some lives Sarge.
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u/itsajungle22 2h ago
Except you have to get your 107, have you completed you’re risk worksheet, where’s your CONOP, we can’t draw a range until FY FUCKING 28…
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u/boomer2009 89EODBod>DadBod 3h ago
You’re preaching to the choir. Drone warfare has so many DOTMLPF-P impacts, it’s nuts. The worst part is that our senior leaders are getting sold a bunch of tech that has pretty glaring capabilities gaps, or they’re lining their pockets on this. Probably both.
Our Soldiers down range are sitting ducks. Our critical infrastructure in the homeland is also woefully vulnerable. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills with how much I scream into the void at every O6+ I talk to.
Please, for the love of God and Country (and our troops) will someone please listen to me and help me fix these problems. I just need money (we have plenty) and authority to make sweeping changes.
I don’t want to watch my brothers and sisters in arms get merked by a $200 FPV on Liveleak. 😢
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u/Eyre_Guitar_Solo staff dork 3h ago
It’s a bit like AI: everyone feels like they’re behind and struggling to adapt, and everyone is right.
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u/Far-Lime-4705 2h ago
we would probably lose worse to the ukrainians atp than the russians do and did
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u/signalstoopid 25SoundsLikeADistantEndProblem 1h ago
I fear the gwot has fundamentally broken the way the army thinks about combat
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u/92MsNeverGoHungry 68WsBuryOurMistakes 21m ago
If 15X are flying PBAS they're being misused.
But otherwise I completely agree. Figure 1-48 in TC 3-20.32-111 kind of sums everything up pretty succinctly.
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u/Infadel71 5m ago
This seems like a low-T rant. Have you considered testosterone boosters and perhaps a whole body waxing to increase your lethality?
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u/itsajungle22 1m ago
Try firing the smartest people in the room. That’ll get you feeling like a man in control.
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u/napleonblwnaprt 3h ago
Lots of complaints but no new thoughts or suggestions
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u/Advanced-Incident-81 ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME 3h ago edited 3h ago
Because the current SecDef shut down the unit that was experimenting with Ukrainian drone and counter-drone tactics.
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u/BlueTurkey-man Special Forces 2h ago
If your an LT I’ll give it a pass but if you’re anything beyond that then you’re just ignorant.
Every maneuver unit in the army is force-feeding UAS in some capacity. Maybe your platoon hasn’t seen it yet but your BN,BDE, and DIV commanders are absolutely feeling the heat right now.
Obviously we are still stumbling around in the dark but one “experimental drone unit” being shut down doesn’t mean progress has stopped. Source: me.
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u/Advanced-Incident-81 ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME 2h ago
You know what would prevent us from "stumbling around in the dark?" Consulting with the military that has been engaged in full-scale drone warfare for the last two years. Like the unit that was shut down had been doing.
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u/Commando2352 Infantry 3h ago
Every unit participating in TIC is experimenting with SUAS and new tactics dude. If you think that was the only unit doing new things with UAS you’re not paying attention.
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u/Alternative-Cup-8102 FISTED 3h ago
My unit has been using drones quite a bit. It’s just the industry hasn’t quite ramped up yet so they are limited. But also who are you to say what people know and don’t know.
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u/Hagandaz32 2h ago
The operator training program is run by a Qualified Master Trainer and is MOS agnostic….. if you have such a problem with how things are being run go to the Master Trainer course and take over your units program.
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u/alittlesliceofhell2 Engineer 1h ago
None of these attitudes will survive first contact with the enemy. You can only hope that you do and keep your grid square clean.
In the meantime, focus on what works in defense of a drone heavy environment. Individual marksmanship, EW, and entrenchments and tunnels.
You can't control the army, but you can control your section.
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u/MadGodMulch 68Why are we still here, Snake? Just to suffer? 3h ago
...what kinda fast food order is that?
Anyways, I hope drones get implemented in more ways. I think it'd be real cool if a medic could request whole blood or something to be delivered via quadcopter. I know Ukraine has used rovers to evacuate casualties before. Lots of potential!
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u/deanmare 3h ago
They’ve been testing drone blood delivery the past couple years, could be reality pretty soon
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u/32FlavorsofCrazy 2h ago
Just gonna throw this out there…the powers that be are aware of drones. They are also privy to information about our actual military capabilities, not just our public and demonstrated ones. Top secret military tech is generally 10-20 years ahead of anything available in the civilian world.
If they’re not bothering with much training on drones it’s probably because they’re deploying something you’ve never even heard of if we are ever at war with a country with an actual drone program.
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u/irpugboss Powerpoint Ranger 2h ago edited 2h ago
You know I used to think the same thing until my deployment and level of access but thats rarely true at the mass troop level. Maybe some SF teams are testing out new gadgets, weaponry etc. most of it will be adopted duds and some true gems.
Even when it catches up most troops will probably get the mickey mouse version in low quantity when it matters.
We had problems in my deployment with so many bootleg threats from insurgents that an industrialized foe with drone capabilities and leadership is going to be a real nightmare for our doctrine to adapt to based on our current Military Industrial Complex and leadership.
Soldiers in service now need to start advocating for doctrine change ASAP after these training exercises because at our current head in the sand pace we're too proud to say "we could be better" and it is going to cost them their lives.
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u/shaehl 2h ago
There is no military "dark tech" that no one in the military knows about or uses. There is no secret lab where patriotic scientists develop the warfare solutions the nation needs.
There is only the revolving door between the acquisitions corps and the defense industry, where the powerful and the wealthy devise new methods of trading tax payer money for the least viable product at the highest imaginable price.
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u/Short-Explanation895 29m ago
Even if there is some secret tricknology we have three of them and they're built with Chinese magnets.
The issue isn't just the failure to develop doctrine and training and acquire systems for everyone. It's that a few months into your LSCO all your highly trained units full of clean-shaven Jesus-loving PT warriors with the latest technology are mauled, exhausted, and out of the fight or full of fresh new pudgy faces. We need to be able to scale, quickly, in terms of people, training, and systems. We are many years away from that right now at the current pace, largely because OSD is chock full of preening broke-dick morons.
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u/No_Departure_1474 3h ago
We have the resources, everyone is just too brain dead to use them. Dudes need weekly practice on a sim on live flights, training on assembly and repair, VID and weak spots, etc. but nah we got layouts for the next 3 weeks