“What is happening here is the building of muscle memory for real combat.” A quote by the U.S. Army Col. Matthew Kelley, given at a live fire exercise in Poland during a NATO exercise, summed up the actual center-of-mass in the incident: armored crews being trained to fight as data-driven team in which small unmanned vehicles were not a special ability, but standard equipment on the battlefield.
Winter Falcon 26 was a match of the U.S. Army units of the 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Reg, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team with Polish forces, and it included a milestone that was important as a symbol and as an interoperability measure. The event saw the initial live rounds fired by the newly commissioned M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams tanks of Poland alongside the U.S. Abrams in the same procedure, an apparent milestone of Warsaw abandoning its own legacy of Soviet-style armor in favor of a U.S.-oriented system of sustainment and training.
A change of the most momentous character, however, was above the gun line. Drones offered twenty-four hours of overwatch, giving information on reconnaissance and terrain back to tankers so they could make maneuver decisions with fewer dead spots. Practically, this condenses the time to reaction: crews are able to recognize probable firing points, check cover and dead space and to maneuver routes without necessarily using line-of-sight optics. The mechanism has been repeatedly proven in high-intensity combat with mini and micro tactical drones producing an almost perfect transparency near the front; the yardstick being an estimated 10,000 drones daily being used in the Ukrainian battle field. In the case of armored formations, the implication is clear and simple: the local air layer needs to be controlled (particularly at low altitude) to survive and be able to move just as much as it is the case with turret armor and gunnery.
That fact also explains the reason why counter-drone systems were not regarded as a special lane. The folded electronic jamming arrays and kinetic interceptors of winter Falcon 26 were integrated into the same combined-arms viewpoint as tanks, attack aviation and rocket artillery. The motionless display in the drill emphasized the message of the doctrine: Abrams platforms were on the field, as well as unmanned aircraft control stations, counter-UAS trucks, and radar, which gave the idea of what it looks like when the mechanized teams will work in a drone-filled environment.
When Poland joined in, the movement was strengthened. Poland, with Abrams, introduced M142 HIMARS rocket launchers, and AH-64D Apache helicopters into combined fire missions, which are part of a larger transition toward networked operations, as opposed to platform-by-platform operations. Engineering-wise, the exercise was not concerned with the performance of one system, but with the interfaces, how targets are identified, detected, passed, approved and serviced across national boundaries and across domains.
There is a growing trend where unmanned capability is being taken even nearer to the armor itself. In an October demonstration by the U.S. Army at Fort Hood, General Dynamics Land Systems and AeroVision mounted Switchblade loitering munitions to combat vehicles using the PERCH modular launcher which it calls a bolt-on kit that does not require welding or structural modification. The idea is important as it considers the “overhead eyes” and beyond-line-of-sight precision effects as an organic launch of a protected crew, closing the connection between the sensing, decision and engagement.
The same reasoning is being multiplied in collective defense architecture on the eastern end of NATO. Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the commander of V Corps, talked about integrating sensors, air defense, and defensive fires, including cloud-based coordination that should enable counter-drone data to be available to formations and partners. The technology objective is not something new, but repeatability: the drone integration and counter-drone protection become the norm of operation of armored units that will have to maneuver under the constant aerial surveillance.
