Drone defense can't be based solely on vehicles or other targets. To restore operational movement, a corps must be able to orchestrate drones and counter-drones systems and other assets to gain an information advantage over the enemy to get the brigades moving and through the enemy kill zone. Patton achieved that in the hedgerow slog in Normandy.
Four U.S. Army corps withe tailored "autonomy formations" will test various aspects of drone warfare:
Several new Army formations will focus on autonomous warfare as the service continues its push to adopt battlefield drones.
Each corps will test equipment, evaluate tactics and recommend ways to carry out autonomous missions across long-range fires, protection, tanks, logistics and obstacle breaching, the service said. The new autonomy formations include a fires battery and watercraft company in I Corps, an armored reconnaissance company in III Corps, a breaching company in V Corps, and aerial reconnaissance and lift companies in XVIII Airborne Corps.
I am sure that testing will show that many types of drones are useful for reducing the risk to soldiers near the front line (which extends quite a bit behind the forward line of troops). But I also suspect that testing will show that LINK small UGVs are not useful as general purpose direct-fire combat vehicles.
Hopefully the Army can restore operational maneuver from positional warfare:
Patton derived his success in large-scale combat operations on the continent from his dynamic approach to warfare and his special units, purpose-built to aid Third Army in managing information. Specifically, Patton strove to generate what twenty-first-century U.S. concepts define as information advantage, “a condition when a force holds the initiative in terms of relevant actor behavior, situational understanding, and decision making.”
How will drones affect that? And how can counter-measures negate enemy drones?
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: Map from second link.
