How a US armor brigade is applying lessons from Ukraine

Even as the U.S. Army works to modernize its light infantry brigades, one armored brigade is also pushing to adapt—with the tech they already have on hand, service officers said this month. 

“We’ve been transforming both in how we approach training and then how we're innovating in the realm of [unmanned aerial systems], counter [drone], and electromagnetic [warfare],” Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, 3rd Infantry Division commander, said at a media roundtable Friday. “Much of what we're doing right now is just using what we have better.” 

In July, the division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team got to test out these new tactics, some drawn from observations of Ukraine, at a rotation through the Army’s National Training Center. The center, located at Fort Irwin, California, pits incoming brigades against the highly trained Blackhorse unit in hyper-realistic simulations of actual combat. 

Before going to the training center, electronic warfare soldiers first spent time monitoring the 1st Brigade’s command posts and then briefed commanders on what their electronic signature looked like, said Col. Jim Armstrong, the brigade’s commander. 

“Every time the battalion [tactical operations center] or the brigade [tactical operations center] went out for training, our [electronic warfare] platoon went out there and mapped them in the spectrum,” he said, speaking at the Fort Moore Maneuver Conference earlier in September. 

The electronic warfare platoon was also given commercially available direction-finding equipment to locate enemy positions, and they trained with the unit’s reconnaissance squadron, Armstrong added. 

The desert environment of NTC gave the unit no room to hide—if the soldiers who play the enemy saw a cellphone signal, there’d be little doubt it belonged to someone in the 3rd Infantry Division. 

So Armstrong brought in fake devices that he hoped would deceive any watchful observers. “Instead of hiding in the clutter, we knew we would have to bring our own clutter to hide in,” he said. 

As part of this effort, the unit used the knowledge they’d gained from monitoring the brigade’s command post to set up a decoy command post, complete with tents and their actual satellite trailer. The unit was able to stock the site with its own gear because the soldiers were running their real command post over new Starlink satellite terminals that offer better speeds. 

The soldiers then keyed the fake command post’s communications network to emit transmissions as though it was a real command post. The unit also placed cell phones and WiFi pucks in the fake post. 

The trick worked: the soldiers who play the enemy jammed the fake command post and also hit the fake site with simulated indirect fire, exposing their own position, Armstrong said. 

Still, the experience revealed challenges with the concept, including how to make a fake command post appear to have realistic signs of life. Having soldiers move back and forth across the site would be more realistic, but would open those soldiers up to enemy attack. 

“How do you create a footprint out of that without having a soldier there?” Armstrong said. 

The unit also struggled to maintain deception planning as the exercise went on, he said. 

The unit brought 90 drones to the exercise, Norrie said during the media roundtable. While 70 of these drones were small Black Hornets, used by infantry squads, the remaining 20 drones were larger quadcopters or tethered drones, which can fly longer because of their connection to electricity. 

The brigade found the drones useful for artillery target correction and reconnaissance, Armstrong said, as well as helping to monitor the amount of smoke needed to obscure large armored vehicles as they prepared to assault enemy positions. 

The unit organized some of its drones into a drone team, said Armstrong, who compared the practice to how the 101st Airborne’s 2nd brigade manages its drones. 

“We're in close coordination with folks like the [2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division]," said Armstrong, speaking at the media roundtable. The 101st’s 2nd Brigade is one of three light infantry brigades that are testing new equipment and developing new tactics as part of an Army modernization effort called “transforming in contact.” 

Rather than try to constantly deconflict airspace for drones and helicopters, the unit also established that drones could fly any time, as long as they were under 150 feet, Armstrong said during his presentation at the Maneuver Conference.  

One-way attack drones should be thought of as munitions for airspace-deconfliction purposes, Armstrong said. “If you’re going to fire a 203 grenade round, you don't call the brigade aviation element” for airspace deconfliction…It’s a mortar round with a camera that can fly.” 

In addition to drone operations, the brigade also practiced counter-drone procedures ahead of their training, said Command Sgt. Maj. Ryan Roush. The drills teach a simple lesson, Armstrong said: “If you’re sitting in the open, you're dying,” 

Amid all the adaptation, soldiers also grappled with how the elements could quickly negate their tech. As daytime temperatures hit 110 degrees, the brigade’s vehicles got so hot that their artillery coordination software slowed to a crawl for hours.   

“The only variant of the [Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle] that has any climate control is the medical variant,” Armstrong said.