The future of warfare felt a lot like playing a video game. Soldiers fastened on virtual-reality glasses and then moved their fingers across the joystick in their palms. A small drone buzzed and lifted in response.
At a military base in Texas last month, American soldiers trained on how to operate small quadcopters, the kind that now dominate the battlefield in Ukraine and are increasingly the weapon of choice for combatants around the world.
With an explosive attached, a drone costing less than $1,000 can destroy a tank worth millions.
For troops at Fort Bliss in El Paso — members of the Multi-functional Reconnaissance Company, 6-1 Cavalry Regiment — the technology and tactics were still new. And for the US military, that’s a problem.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spurred a flurry of evolution in drone warfare — so much so that the US, with one of the most advanced militaries and defense industrial complexes in the world, found itself behind. Most American soldiers lack the know-how for fighting with unmanned systems, and while the US has excelled at building large, expensive weaponry — fighter jets, tanks, precision-guided missiles — it is in many ways unprepared to quickly produce large quantities of small, cheap systems, like drones.
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