Lead Panelist: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck, Squadron Commander, 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment

Panelists:

  • Maj. Galen King, Regimental Executive Officer, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
  • Maj. Mary Meidenbauer, S6, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
  • Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington, Platoon Sergeant, Eagle Troop, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
  • Staff Sgt. Mario Contorno, Squad Leader, Eagle Troop, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment

Opening Statement

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
I'm Lt. Col. Jason Kruck, commander of Second Squadron, Second Cavalry Regiment. It's a privilege to join you today alongside other leaders of the Second Cavalry Regiment as we concluded Fly Trap 5.0. Over the last month in Lithuania, nearly 1,000 personnel from the United States, United Kingdom, allies, and partners have worked side-by-side with soldiers and industry teammates to accelerate how we identify, integrate, and refine emerging capabilities.

What we've done here is simple in concept but powerful in execution: put new tools directly into the hands of soldiers, stress them under realistic conditions, gather feedback, and improve them quickly. But Fly Trap is about more than testing equipment. Technology by itself does not create advantage. However, it's trained soldiers, disciplined leaders, trusted partners, and formations that can adapt faster than the threat that do.

Exercises like this help us integrate new capabilities, improve command and control, reduce complexity for leaders, and strengthen decision-making in contested environments. The Army has learned throughout its history that readiness cannot begin at the point of crisis. From lessons like Task Force Smith to observations from modern conflicts, we are reminded that trust, integration, and proficiency must be built before they are needed. You cannot surge readiness after a conflict starts, but you build it through training, repetition, and adaptation.

That is what Fly Trap represents. This effort is not simply about countering drones. It's about preparing formations to absorb change quickly, operate with allies effectively, solve battlefield problems faster, and become more effective at warfighting while providing soldiers the systems they need to do just that.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

Question & Answer Session

Speaker: Greg Jaffe (New York Times)
Yeah, I'd love it if you could talk a little bit maybe about your C2 systems and your ability to sort of integrate information from lots of different sources and what's working and what's not been working in that venue.

Speaker: Maj. Mary Meidenbauer
This is Maj. Mary Meidenbauer. From the C2 system perspective, interoperability was one of our major training objectives for Fly Trap. So I will say that we made a lot of really great strides in terms of incorporating new systems, integrating new systems, and building out what that operating picture is going to look like for the regiment and hopefully for the army as a whole.

Speaker: Greg Jaffe (New York Times)
Can you talk a little bit about areas where you might have found gaps and how—areas where you can fill in and improve?

Speaker: Maj. Mary Meidenbauer
Yeah. So I can't get into individual system performance, but what I can say is that we did a lot of work with industry partners to try to fill gaps and really focus on fielding capabilities faster, rather than fixate on any one piece or component.

Speaker: Kelsey Baker (Business Insider)
I'm a little bit of a newcomer to project Fly Trap, so I would really appreciate getting to hear some of the details about lessons learned behind the training and also perhaps especially from the perspective of your Sergeant First Class there, or anyone who would be kind of at the most tactical level. Thank you.

Speaker: Staff Sgt. Mario Contorno
So what I can speak to in regards to Fly Trap in terms of my involvement is I had to use—me and my squad had to use the sUAS systems and so the biggest variable...

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
It was a major identification of gaps that we had to learn from, what worked well for us, what didn't work well for us when it came to both Counter-UAS and UAS. In regards to his remarks, it's whether or not and when is the correct time to get the eyes in the sky. When is the correct time to jam the sky to enable freedom of maneuver while we're maneuvering across open terrain or large movements? And then when it comes to the Counter-UAS aspect, especially working with the foreign nations and our allies, we're learning what systems and capabilities they're implementing. We're testing it ourselves and we're working hand-in-hand to identify what works the most effective in order to counter this UAS threat for our dismounted vehicles maneuvering on ground, as well as giving our higher echelons the eyes and information in the sky that they need.

Speaker: Kelsey Baker (Business Insider)
Yeah, if you don't mind, could you break that down a little bit more? I mean like, can you talk to me like I'm your grandma?

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
Yes, ma'am. Just breaking it down, Fly Trap 5.0 was a full test of systems and capabilities that our government is allotting us. They saw potential in the products that were brought out, whether it be drone detection or countering. And we came out to exercise a field problem with an allied nation, being the UK. They brought out their systems as well to use against us, a force-on-force kind of environment. And from there, we entered battle periods where we went against each other, and then we talked amongst each other what worked and what doesn't work. Therefore, we can provide the correct information and feedback for our nation to be more successful in this fight that should or could potentially come.

Speaker: Kelsey Baker (Business Insider)
That's—that is helpful. Can you tell me more about some of those details of what you learned?

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
Yes, ma'am. To keep it in the simplest terms, what we've learned is our capabilities in depth, being how far can we reach out to see and how far can we detect what may be potentially coming our way, all the way out from the furthest level out to range, as well as all the way down to the immediate level. Where we have elements of us maneuvering on ground, can we detect and can we engage and counter the immediate drone threat or UAS threat that is coming our way? Whether it's the enemy trying to gain eyes on us and fix us in place, or whether it would be the enemy executing a strike on us that we need to immediately neutralize. And can we successfully do so without sustaining any casualties?

Speaker: Jen Judson (Bloomberg)
I wanted to ask, did the war in Iran so far validate any assumptions Fly Trap had already been testing? What are those assumptions? How are you validating those? And what lessons from the Middle East operations might have changed the Fly Trap focus or emphasis in any areas?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
So what's going on in CENTCOM right now? Well, as professional stewards of the profession, obviously we are watching and learning; it's part of our job. We'd be neglectful if we did not maintain awareness of that. However, for Fly Trap specific, it's kind of two different things in a way. That's a different scale than Fly Trap, with Fly Trap being focused on the small unmanned systems—all the things Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington was just explaining to you on how we're trying to evolve in that element of the operating environment.

Speaker: Jen Judson (Bloomberg)
Yeah, I mean, I also just want to get a sense of what's next. Project Fly Trap has been going on for a while. This is 5.0. Can you talk a little bit about what 6.0 or 5.5 is going to look like? How is this evolving?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
No problem, because something that we took away from Fly Trap here is this is getting towards that realistic scenario. You know, you sometimes follow how we test new equipment. It's in a, call it a sterile environment or something that's easy to test from a scientific perspective, if you will, like on a specific system. What we were replicating through the Fly Trap series is continuing to make it bigger at scale, more in complexity, more realistic terrain and environment, and against a living, breathing, thinking enemy, again, like Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington was describing how we would go on force-on-force against our British allies. So that way we could actually have our leaders at echelon see how do these things work through a long-duration battle period against a living, breathing, thinking enemy.

So that way we can actually see how this works with soldiers who are tired, who are stressed; systems that while they may work for an hour on an airfield or during a demo, how do they work after 8, 12, 36 hours straight? You know, in the environment we saw here in Lithuania in a 24-hour period, we could see sunshine, then we could see gusts above 30 miles an hour, rain, snow, sleet. We've experienced everything over the last few weeks, and that's what the Fly Trap series does. As we go forward, we look to continue that progression, continue where we can and we're able to incorporate more allies and partners, continue timing with industry leading up to a solid training readiness plan, so when we hit the ground in the next Fly Trap, we'll continue on this upward trajectory of how we are learning as an organization to best adapt to the operating environment.

Speaker: Jen Judson (Bloomberg)
Just on that, can you say who—you know, more allies, if you're adding allies—who those might be or where this might take place? Are you going to move it to a different country or anything like that?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
In full transparency right now, that's so far out. We're still in the middle of it here finishing up. But I'm sure that will get figured out in due time and, as good soldiers, we'll go and we'll partner with who we're going to partner with wherever that may end up being.

Speaker: Meredith Roaten (Janes)
I'm wondering if you can talk about how many of the systems that you were testing were kind of for fixed-site or force protection versus how many were for, like, you know, an offensive maneuver against adversary drone forces. Thanks.

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
So again, going back to one of the things that, you know, I was given commander-to-commander at echelon of what was the—if we had to strip away a lot of the language, part of the intent was how can I get a rifle company in a UAS-saturated environment to defeat those UAS systems and be able to do offensive maneuvers, you know, the way that the United States Army prefers to fight. So with that, the systems here were geared towards how do we protect our soldiers, whether they are stationary or on the move, but with the idea that we are constantly moving, and then how do we project our power in this realm as we go on offensive task maneuvers, again, circling it back to how we always prefer to fight.

Speaker: Meredith Roaten (Janes)
Can you clarify? Was this in, like, lanes, the testing? Or was this more in, like, an actual, you know, training scenario where you were up against adversary forces that were represented by other units controlling those drones and, you know, actually being out in the environment? Thanks.

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Yeah, no problem. So yes, this was free-play force-on-force. So we had my squadron and one of the troops, so, you know, a rifle company—so that's about approximately 150 soldiers—going up against, and who their opposing force was, was the British paratroopers out of a dismounted rifle company. So that way they're at parity with some of their capabilities and we were letting them just fight it out. Yes, we did have exercise control in the background, as far as we had observer-controller trainers to make sure it's done safely and fairly, because if you've ever been around a military drill, people get into it; they get very competitive. So we have some of that safety mechanism, as well as we had assessors who would also follow along with the specific systems to make sure we're giving that necessary data analysis and feedback back to both our trained command as well as industry. Again, so we were able to understand, provide feedback, and adapt as quickly as possible.

Speaker: Meredith Roaten (Janes)
Do you have an example of how many British adversary drones that you were able to shoot down, by any chance?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
So with force-on-force, sometimes it takes a while to collect that data, and that is currently what we're doing as we finish collecting and adjudicating. I'm sure that will be something that we'll have an opportunity for you to be able to reach back, you know, through the PAO channels to see what we can release. But as of right now, I do not have that data on hand.

Speaker: David Martin (CBS)
What type of systems specifically were used in the exercise? Were there drone counter-drones? Were there unmanned ground vehicles? What was used to go against the adversary drones?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Yeah, I can confirm that it was all those things you just named. We were maximizing the ability to be able to use exactly as you said: so small unmanned air systems as well as the counter systems, both passive and active, for the capabilities, as well as unmanned ground vehicles.

Speaker: David Martin (CBS)
Just making sure that swarms, like multiple small drones at a time, were tested too.

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
Just to help out with that real quick. Yes, during our attacks, or battle drills, or executions, to overwhelm the enemy and over-stress our system and our capabilities, yes, we massed our sUAS platforms and attack platforms to see how effectively we could impact an enemy force.

Speaker: Paul McLeary (Politico)
Were you using drones and counter-drone systems that are already in the Army inventory, or are you testing out new systems provided by industry? And the second part is, during the kind of free-play exercise, what did some individual soldiers do that maybe surprised you or that were innovative or kind of forward-thinking that moved the effort along or you learned things from?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
I'll do the first part of that and then I'll pass it off between the NCOs, you know, they can give their perspective on specifically the soldier aspect. But yes, we were using both program-of-record drones as well as new emerging ones as we were testing and validating their ability to operate in this environment. But I'll pass it off if Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington, you want to chime in.

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
As to your second part of the question, that's what is the best part about working with allied nations. We can see what they're incorporating to increase their capability, their range. I would have to say for this exercise, we identified how well that they were able to increase the range of their sUAS and their attack platforms just by utilizing their relay systems or a stronger mesh network within their capabilities. And it's something I highly look forward to us incorporating whenever we move on to the next Fly Trap.

Speaker: Paul McLeary (Politico)
Thanks. And did any soldier, you know, come up with an innovative solution to a problem that, you know, after they did it, you kind of said, "huh, that was a good idea, we didn't think of that"?

Speaker: Maj. Galen King
I'm the regimental executive officer. So one thing that I think that was kind of a highlight from this exercise that wasn't necessarily related to counter-UAS or UAS, but I think is a feature of what we're seeing across all of our soldiers right now, was with our regimental additive manufacturing platoon. We deployed this element up to Lithuania as part of the exercise, and with their team, they have lathes, they have 3D printing machines, they have all sorts of additive and subtractive manufacturing kit. And throughout the exercise, not only were they fixing and repairing drones that would be used throughout training, but they were also fabricating several of the mounts, the brackets, and other kind of key pieces of equipment that we needed to install some of this vendor counter-UAS equipment onto our Strykers, which is our mounted eight-wheel combat platform. So that's something that we had a junior Lieutenant and a Sergeant doing, but I think it's really emblematic of some of the broader innovation and kind of innovative spirit that we see across the regiment and across our soldiers who are applying themselves against these hard problems and coming up with solutions to things that I think are pretty impressive.

Speaker: Paul McLeary (Politico)
Thanks. And one more, sorry. Did jamming play in these exercises at all? Did you jam or the adversary jam at all?

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
Absolutely. That's another system within the counter-UAS role that was tested on both sides, identifying the major need to increase our frequency broadband. Therefore, we can jam more platforms that are coming our way, as well as the enemy seeing how capable and how much range they could reach out to jam and provide freedom of maneuver for their maneuvers as well.

Speaker: Meghann Myers (Defense One)
What is an example of a new kind of system or a new TTP that you guys tested out during this iteration of Fly Trap? And how did that go?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
I'll say one because, you know, obviously I don't want to give too many specifics, but in this role as a career infantryman and kind of growing up through the last couple of decades, it's understanding the expansion of the domains that we have to be aware of and counter. So what I saw from the squadron level with my main command post and these new systems was understanding the battlefield architecture, where things are not just on the ground but their effects in the sky, in this case. That would be a big one. So what you saw in my main command post was, you know, instead of going from a simple, "hey, we understand the enemy is here," and usually we'd be looking at an indirect fire target, you know, it'd be a drill. Well, now with the counter-UAS detect systems, we could identify that there is an enemy air drone coming through our sector, and then we developed new TTPs on how we counter that. What are the options, and how does that balance between intelligence collection, the fires element—who now also has to cover down on that counter-UAS viewpoint—and then over to the maneuver side, and how that synergy between those three portions of warfighting work together, understanding this new domain with the capabilities we were given.

Speaker: Meghann Myers (Defense One)
I do. So assuming that there's going to be another Fly Trap, what are some of the notes that you're giving either for your team or for the next team to be able to test out some of these scenarios based on how it went during this current iteration?

Speaker: Maj. Galen King
So I think with each one of the Fly Traps, what I think we've seen a trend of is, and I think Lt. Col. Kruck hit it, we're always increasing scaling. So both the level of unit that we are testing, we are also talking scaling of the amount of UAS that are flying, and then we're always increasing the realism and complexity of both the scenario and the OPFOR. So I think as we continue to move into future Fly Trap iterations, I think that's what we can expect. We will move beyond the troop and the squadron headquarters that we were really focused on this time and continue to create an environment with a more realistic enemy which is flying more UAS, using more electronic warfare, and continuing to provide increasing amounts of this kind of multi-layered counter-UAS approach for friendly forces as part of this scenario.

Speaker: Cybele Osterman-Mayes (USA Today)
Hi, can you describe what these exercises look like exactly? Do you have any metrics for how these drones were taken down and can you say which system works the best versus which system worked the worst?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
So going off a similar earlier question, we are still in that data collection and analysis phase. We have some anecdotal things as the force-on-force and what was observed, however, none of that's really verified at this time. Whether the number that were taken down or the specific systems that may have done it, there were actually specific questions on how that worked and who did it. That is part of, you know, especially between our data analyst cell at echelon, they're digging into that right now. So unfortunately, I don't have the exacts for you, but in time that team will have it.

Speaker: Cybele Osterman-Mayes (USA Today)
Thanks. And the systems that are determined to have worked the best, like what is the plan with that? How are you going to integrate that into current operations later on down the line?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
So as we go forward, really that's probably above my level of exactly what we get and what we have. What we're really able to do here, the opportunity we had, was to provide the feedback with what we were able to train with here. And really, from my vantage point as a ground force maneuver commander, it's really identifying the capabilities, providing feedback on that, you know, kind of system-agnostic. However, we will be getting that feedback, and then in the future, what ends up getting procured or anything like that, or what we get as the next training set, that'll be something decided by somebody higher up than me. And I'll just get to be the lucky recipient and be able to train with it some more.

Speaker: Mike Brest (Washington Examiner)
I believe there was already a question about the war in Iran and whether it had validated some of the things done in this exercise. But could you talk about any lessons that have been learned through the Russia-Ukraine war and how those lessons impacted this exercise? And then, secondly, could you also share a complete list of the countries that participated in this exercise, please? Thank you.

Speaker: Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright
Mike, I can get you that from this exercise. I can get you a whole list of that from United States Army Europe and Africa to help so they don't have to list all the countries.

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Similar to the Iranian thing, yes, we are absolutely paying attention, learning. You know, we have a great resource out here, USAREUR-AF, and they provide those lessons learned so that way we can understand, and we're starting from a known point as best we can. So again, as a profession in arms, constantly learning so that way we are adapting. We are implementing that in our training readiness. So again, we're staying ahead of the curve before we need to. We're taking the time now to observe those lessons and incorporate it.

Speaker: Mike Brest (Washington Examiner)
Is there any specific lesson that you can think of that has really played an impact in how you guys envision drones or counter-UAS systems?

Speaker: Maj. Galen King
I think, and this is really a common theme throughout the regiment and I think across the theater, but I think one of the key lessons that we've taken from ongoing conflicts is really related to what we call the Triad. The three parts of the Triad are UAS, Counter-UAS, and Electronic Warfare, and they're all bound together by a network that's able to synthesize the data and information from all three. And for our purposes, we think that units, to unlock their maneuver potential in the future, will need to generally have those three things. And I think that's kind of one of the prevalent lessons learned that we're learning from ongoing conflicts and has kind of, again, been one of the key things that drove how we formulated the exercise design for all of the Fly Traps, and certainly moving forward. Hopefully, that's helpful.

Speaker: Dan Schere (Inside Defense)
I wanted to ask a little bit more about the additive manufacturing platoon. Can you just talk about, was it both drone and counter-drone systems that they were involved in doing the additive manufacturing for? And kind of how does this build on some of the 3D printing that might have been done in past Fly Trap exercises? And just what are your biggest lessons learned that you're taking away from that in terms of their ability to do that kind of additive manufacturing in the field?

Speaker: Maj. Galen King
So just as a little bit of history or context. So this platoon has been kind of intimately involved in all of the Fly Traps that we've done. They were also kind of some of the original plank holders for how we 3D printed some of our initial tranche of drones as well. So this team has a significant amount of experience both building, fabricating, 3D printing, etc., and UAS, and then repairing those systems. The thing I think that was a real highlight during this experience was them being able to see a sub-component of a counter-UAS system, or a mount, or a bracket, be able to use a CAD program, and then be able to fabricate an 80% solution that was able to take a piece of vendor kit and then integrate it onto our Stryker. And I think for us, and this is something that we've kind of been experiencing for the last two years, is that Expeditionary Additive Manufacturing is really just an essential component of what the regiment does when it deploys.

So we invested a long time ago in probably 30 3D printers across the Army. We have significant amounts of this manufacturing equipment, and what it does is it allows us to be able to print and fabricate parts not only for drones but also for other parts of our fleet to make sure that we can have that type of equipment forward in the hands of warfighters so that if it breaks, we can fabricate it quickly and get it back into the fight. Hopefully, that answers your question.

Speaker: Dan Schere (Inside Defense)
Sure. Are those printers deployed forward and around the globe or what's the, where are those deployed?

Speaker: Maj. Galen King
Yes, sir. So we have probably 20 of them where we are stationed in Rose Barracks. But we do have a small number of them that get deployed in a modular shelter wherever the regiment deploys throughout Europe. So currently, we have a team here in Lithuania, and they're currently supporting operations in Lithuania, and then about a week ago they were supporting operations in Poland as well.

Speaker: Dan Schere (Inside Defense)
And just one real quick one, were most of the drones that were used in Fly Trap like more of the Group 1 and 2 size drones, or were they more of a variety?

Speaker: Maj. Galen King
They were Group One and Group Two.

Speaker: W.J. Hennigan (New York Times)
I was trying to get a sense of scale here. How many drones is the team facing, you know, and how many types in any given moment? Is it dozens? Hundreds?

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Yeah, it definitely varied. And again, remember the scale of this, right? It was really a rifle company versus a rifle company, by and large. So yeah, definitely not in the hundreds or thousands, but definitely in the tens at one point, you know, from both sides. So you probably never breached the triple-digit number, but we massed as much as we could with the systems that we had out here to really give that effect. For the soldier on the ground—and I'll open up to Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington and Staff Sgt. Mario Contorno if they want to talk about their perspective—what is it like to live in an environment where there's constantly UAS overhead, hunting you? Because that definitely changed the dynamic of war. So I'll pass it to Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington if he'd like to add anything.

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
It increased the realistic effect. I'm the one maneuvering on the ground with my platoon and my friendly platoons and allies next to me. It increases the real effect, like I'm out there doing my patrols and all of a sudden you hear buzzing. No longer am I just scanning to my 12:00 and around me at ground level. Now we've incorporated this warfare to where now we have to scan up and out as well. Is there potential reconnaissance hovering about 500 feet AGL, or is there—you have to now learn the sounds of the drones. Does it sound like one of the one-way attack drones coming in our potential direction? To hear that coming at you increases a whole different lesson-learned factor of how do I react immediately to this? And then we go through our drills of what we've incorporated and what we're practicing and are developing of the new TTPs that were asked about earlier.

Therefore, we are incorporating as many drones as we can. We want to mass as well to keep the enemy pinned down and have them worried about up and above while we maneuver on ground. At the same time. So basically, we're fixing them from high while we're maneuvering from low.

Speaker: W.J. Hennigan (New York Times)
That's interesting. So are you starting to train on the audio, you know, are troops getting spun up on that, or is that only through a lived experience that you have that knowledge? And then can you talk a little bit about the soft and hard kill systems that you're equipped with and what you were using out there?

Speaker: Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington
So we're not necessarily fully incorporated into the audio factor. It's just something I'm trying to incorporate with my maneuvering elements that I have on ground with me. Some one-way attack drones have a higher buzz sound; they sound faster and more rapid versus your enemy reconnaissance assets. They're flying at a higher level, they're up in the sky, they're hovering, more of a flatter platform that is more easily detected by early detection by all the assets that Lt. Col. Jason Kruck was talking about previously. And then by the time it even gets to our echelon on the ground where we're at as a last kinetic defense, that's when we're incorporating the weapon systems and items of equipment that we have within our maneuvering squads and platoon and on our vehicles that I don't know if I'm necessarily able to share at this time. I'm going to have to pass that one on for approval on that matter.

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Yeah. I think to sum it up, what you're looking for is, from a 'sense' standpoint, they're both passive and active, both on frequency spectrums as well as acoustic. And then as you go towards a 'decide' phase, you know, what are we going to do? That goes back to the information systems and networking we were talking about earlier, as we understand the common operating picture of what's in the air and what's on the ground, friendly and enemy. And then on the 'act' phase, and that's where you know, describing the ability for whether to jam—whether it's a non-kinetic defeat—or a kinetic defeat, you know, literally shooting it out of the sky with a system that has a round that we can send downrange.

Speaker: John Seward (Washington Times)
My question was a little bit about C2 and planning. I wanted to know how training with sUAS on offensive and on the defensive side was changing the air picture and obviously, like the Army's been investing a lot into how we produce that COP you just mentioned, sir. What were some of the equipment that you all were testing and integrating into that to actually make things flow a little smoother? Thank you.

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Yeah, this definitely has not drastically changed planning. I mean, again, a couple of decades into this, you can even go back to the 80s, 90s, and Land-Air Battle where that stuff was being introduced, and as it solidifies doctrine, then we go through our time over the last couple of decades with conflicts and up to now. There has always been an appreciation for the air picture and having systems that can inform us of that data and that analysis.

So really the difference is now, instead of only worrying about the larger airframes, now it's having the systems that can provide that signature and detection of these much smaller aircraft, for lack of a better term, because that is a different challenge. And then how do you coordinate that stuff? How do you enable a cloud for freedom of maneuver for our friendly sUAS? But at the same time, how do we detect and defeat enemy counter-UAS? So there's a little extra planning in that sense because at certain points, there was a lot—even though it was just one troop versus one company, there was still enough of an air picture that we had to have a good plan to account for that so it enabled ground force maneuver to achieve their objective.

Speaker: John Seward (Washington Times)
So I just wanted to ask, with some of the new COP systems, one of the things that kind of got highlighted to me was exactly what you were just talking about, how we took our more traditional air picture and clearance of fires and air clearance from essentially a very sort of manual process to a lot more automated process, got the time down really quickly. But as you just mentioned, with sUAS, that air picture starts to become very crowded very quickly. So just trying to understand if there was any sort of effort into ensuring that that crowding didn't take over the air picture, if that makes sense.

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Sure. As with anything, you know, we have a plan and then the enemy gets a vote, and we live that every day. And that was something that this exercise provided us with, that realism is, how crowded does it get? And it definitely got crowded. And even with the plan, with the control measures in place, it still became something that could quickly become overwhelming. And as we continue to go through, test, and iterate on the systems that we were provided and go through with their integration, we did see that clear up, and we did see we're on the trajectory of being able to understand this better and operate in this environment better. It really became an invaluable experience for my squadron, the troop, as well as our allies who were part of it, to be able to get that real sense and real feel. And then going forward on the hopeful future iterations of this, we'll continue to increase that scale, again, providing that much more realistic feedback and immersing ourselves in that environment to understand the complexity of it.

Closing Comment

Speaker: Lt. Col. Jason Kruck
Hey, I just wanted to thank everybody again. I'm super proud of what the team did here and the opportunity to be able to spread the message and tell our story of what we've done with this Fly Trap series, making our Army better, continuing to be on that leading edge, being able to operate in this operating environment. And I'd still say the biggest takeaway from Fly Trap is that it's about more than technology. Modern battle, as you all see, evolves quickly, and our responsibility as the professionals and the stewards of our way of life is ensuring our soldiers and formations can learn, adapt, and integrate new capabilities faster than the emerging threats that we see today. The Army has always adapted through its history, and readiness is really dependent on preparing before a crisis begins, not during one. So exercises like Fly Trap help ensure that we continue building that readiness alongside our trusted allies and partners. At the end of the day, it is about giving soldiers every possible advantage and ensuring they remain ready, survivable, and effective for whatever challenges the future may bring. Thanks again.