In the age of great power competition, American ground forces will again face artillery barrages and not just the occasional rocket and mortar strikes during the COIN era.
According to reports, the drones flew at altitudes of one hundred to five thousand meters, targeting enemy assets deep behind the lines. The swarm, acting in unison, spotted mobile military units to target, but significantly, the swarms were used to enhance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and not for strike. Russian forces have shown in Ukraine that their drones are tightly integrated with artillery, especially multiple rocket launchers such as the Smerch and Uragan systems. These weapons almost annihilated two Ukrainian battalions in minutes at Zelenopillya in July 2014, when Ukrainian brigades marshalling for offensive operations were overflown by Russian drones. Moments later, they were targeted in a pre-emptive multi-barrel rocket attack with devastating results. It should be noted that Russia continues to maintain an advantage over the United States and NATO in terms of both artillery and rocket munitions and when coupled with drone units are a cause for considerable concern.
As I noted in the last data dump, the Army is well aware of the threat:
Command posts are missile magnets the way they emit and the Army wants to break them apart to operate in separate places to reduce vulnerability. They'd best be mobile, too. And armored.
We may need the drone combat air patrols I advocated in Army magazine to protect forward Army troops from that threat.
