The 3rd Infantry Division is testing new formations where soldiers are part of specialized teams that focus on using a certain kind of drone technology or specific electronic warfare threat.
The concept is being developed as the Army shifts its focus to fighting conventional wars in the 21st century. As the service changes the way it organizes its forces and prepares for the next big conflict, several units have been hand-selected as part of the service’s Transforming in Contact initiative, including the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team. Started by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in 2024, the plan centers around quickly fielding new tech to soldiers so they can give feedback on how it’s best used, before they’re in a situation where they have to rely on it.
After testing some of the concepts at home-based training centers, the 3rd Infantry Division is bringing new units to a field exercise where they will train alongside NATO allies at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels Training Area, Germany, this month and next.
The division’s commander, Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, told reporters on a call Tuesday that drones, or unmanned aerial systems, UAS, are a threat to all of the Army’s formations and weapons.
“What we believe is that the right lesson to learn as we look around the world is the importance of conducting combined arms operations altogether. It’s not just tanks, it’s not just infantry, it’s not just aviation or artillery, but it’s all of those things working together,” Norrie said. “Being able to do that as a combined arms team at scale and at night, we believe in our souls that that’s how we win.”
The goal is to get drones and UAS “down to every section within that brigade,” meaning that soldiers in all squads and platoons will have some knowledge of how to operate and use them in battle, Donovan Blatherwick, innovation chief for the 3rd Infantry Division, told Task & Purpose. Just how much drone expertise each soldier in a platoon will be expected to have is still being worked out, he added.
As part of its emphasis on drones, the division is testing UAS-focused teams of soldiers within its cavalry squadron, like platoons who specialize in using anti-tank systems, first-person viewer attack, FPV, drones or sensing enemy drones.
While cavalry squadrons historically had “guys on the ground” going to a vantage point to do reconnaissance for their unit, now the Army is looking to drone operators to increase the distances they can see and collect intelligence on, said Capt. Gabriel Velazquez, a spokesperson for the division.
Blatherwick said the idea is to improve reconnaissance at the unit level.
“They’re not having to send up a request to collect intel or pictures on a certain site. Everybody really within the brigade can kind of just do it themselves on their own,” he said.
For its UAS dismounted team, Armstrong said they’ve used them successfully in exercises in Germany with “complex terrain” — a scenario that poses an issue for armored brigades that might struggle with “limited lines of sight.” But with these dismounted UAS teams helping with reconnaissance, their electronic warfare platoons can get “closer to the enemy and in a better position to use their UAS to help us make contact with unmanned systems first,” Armstrong added.
In the same way that drones are becoming central to modern-day wars, the division is expanding its use of electronic warfare with a second electronic warfare platoon instead of one. At a recent National Training Center exercise at Fort Irwin, California, soldiers used a deception command post as a decoy. To do so, the soldiers thought about where they thought “the enemy was gonna look for a command post,” Armstrong said.
“We put a physical signature there and then we played back our electronic signature there and put our actual command post somewhere else,” he said. “That had them expose their weapon systems, which gave us an opportunity to attack them instead of us having to displace our command post.”
The division is also testing a brand new formation of just over 100 soldiers called a multi-effects company “to integrate what we deemed kind of the four most important technology categories,” Blatherwick said. Within this company, they’re experimenting with platoons that are each focused on electronic warfare, UAS, counter-UAS, and loitering munitions.
Blatherwick said this company is the armor team’s version of the multi-functional reconnaissance team concept that was developed for mobile brigade combat teams in phase one of Transforming in Contact. The multi-functional reconnaissance teams are made up of three “hunter-killer” platoons focused on drones, electronic warfare, and robotics and autonomous systems.
“Armor moves a lot faster than [mobile brigade combat teams] do and cover a lot more ground so the difference with our [multi-effects company] is that it’s looking a lot deeper. It’s got the ability to sense a lot deeper and then put fires a lot deeper than what we previously had before,” Blatherwick said. “Really it’s the ability to touch the enemy a lot sooner.”
The first phase of the Army’s Transforming in Contact plan fielded new equipment to soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, the 10th Mountain Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, and the 25th Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team.
After training with the new tech in exercises at home and abroad, 101st Airborne soldiers now fly drones with 3D printed parts and 10th Mountain soldiers use commercially available UAS like Skydio X2D that they can carry in their rucksack and use for ??reconnaissance in the field.
In the same way that the first phase taught a mobile brigade combat team to assemble on the battlefield with lighter and smaller formations, the armored brigade combat team is learning that they might also have to slim down their presence. For instance, the 101st Mobile Brigade Combat Team created smaller command posts made up of four Humvees and a tent. For armored brigades, those command posts might look like four Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles, AMPVs, and a tent, officials said.
The second phase of Transforming in Contact includes the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team and 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Rose Barracks, Vilseck, Germany. Officials then plan to expand the concept to two divisions, two Stryker brigade combat teams, members of the National Guard and two armored brigade combat teams.
For the 3rd Infantry Division, that includes its 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, a unit made up of 1,250 vehicles, 87 tanks, 125 Bradleys, 18 Paladins, and consumes more than 31,000 tons of ammunition in one day of combat, according to stats provided by officials with the division.
“It’s the equivalent of having in the National Football League an offensive lineman who’s 6’9, weighs 435 pounds, and can run a 40-yard dash in 3.5 seconds. These are big athletes that get up the field to break the will of an adversary determined to beat us here,” Norrie said.
While the threat of drones is very real to soldiers, Col. Jim Armstrong, commander of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, described a recent exercise at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where drones were used to give them the upper hand. As the unit’s lead battalion began closing in on a town that they planned to seize, soldiers flew a drone overhead to get a better idea of what they were walking into.
“Before that assault force company commander went into that town, he knew where every single enemy element was in the town before going in and making contact, trying to develop the situation while soldiers were in harm’s way,” Armstrong said. “We were committing our crude assets only at a time and place of our choosing and when it was to our advantage.”
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