Drones and – At a 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team exercise at Fort Polk in Louisiana in April, a brigade commander described how a company commander used attack drones, electronic warfare tools, smoke canisters, and two C4-packed ground robots to make a dangerous breach unc
In a training field at Fort Polk, Louisiana, the work of making a deadly battlefield breach “uncontested” started long before the riflemen crossed the line.
During a 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team exercise at the Joint Readiness Training Center in April. a company commander was tasked with clearing a breach using uncrewed systems rather than the slow. risk-heavy movement soldiers are trained to rely on. Col. Ryan Bell. the brigade commander. told reporters that he assigned the task and remembered telling the commander: “I want you to make this breach uncontested for your riflemen when they enter.”.
Breaching missions are designed for soldiers who must move slowly through obstacles such as mines. wire. trenches. barriers. walls. and anti-vehicle ditches. Bell stressed how enemy forces may have already prepared machine guns, artillery, or mortars on the most predictable pathways. If troops get pinned down by obstacles or jammed in a killbox, the mission can turn quickly deadly.
To prevent that kind of fight from happening at all, the company commander shifted the danger onto drones and robots. Bell said the unit executing the breach mission launched 25 attack drones—assembled by soldiers themselves—to destroy enemy positions including bunkers. machine gun nests. and triple-strand concertina wire.
Other drones were used against electronic warfare sensors and jammers. More uncrewed aerial systems dropped smoke canisters to obscure the battlefield. When the more visible threats were reduced. remaining obstacles—including land mines and wire obstacles—were destroyed by two uncrewed ground vehicles packed with C4 explosives.
When the riflemen finally arrived, Bell said the payoff was immediate. “When the riflemen got there, the breach was uncontested,” he said. “Every target had been struck.”
Bell also described what the uncrewed approach replaced. “And you didn’t have an engineer or a Sapper squad running out with a grappling hook trying to low-crawl with a Bangalore torpedo. ” the commander said. “It took us 35 drones and a little over 100 pounds of C4, but under the cost of three 155mm artillery barrages.”.
The brigade framed the operation as proof of a “drone contact layer. ” a concept aimed at engaging enemy forces before human soldiers do—reducing losses and changing how the first seconds of an assault unfold. Bell said the advantage is that when his riflemen get there. “the enemy is already down. and they are finishing the fight. but it’s an unfair fight.”.
The breach mission was only one part of the 3rd Mobile Brigade’s broader experimentation with drones. Soldiers at the exercise were assembling their own cheap. attritable systems using parts from the US’ Blue UAS [Uncrewed Aerial Systems] List and their own 3D printed pieces. Bell said the brigade learned several lessons. including the need for significant numbers of cheap drones that are easy for soldiers to quickly use in combat conditions.
Artificial intelligence also entered the drills, but not everywhere. Bell said the brigade is implementing AI into planning, including staff building their own agents. He referenced one case in which an AI bot processed 25,000 battlefield reports to provide a clearer picture of the environment.
Still, Bell drew a line around what AI can and can’t do. “Large language models don’t really understand three-dimensional space. so they’re not good for developing courses of action. ” he said. “That’s where you need the expertise of a skilled staff to understand the art of fighting to plan the operation.”.
The scene at Fort Polk, as Bell described it, ends with a simple operational message: let drones and robots take the first, most dangerous cuts, so the fight riflemen are trained to enter never becomes the fight they’re forced to survive.
US Army Fort Polk 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team Joint Readiness Training Center uncrewed systems attack drones C4 explosives breach mission electronic warfare sensors jammers smoke canisters drone contact layer artificial intelligence Blue UAS list 3D printed drones