Lieutenant Colonel Vonnie Wright: Good afternoon. This is Lieutenant Colonel Vonnie Wright from the Army Public Affairs Office. I'll be moderating today's interview. Today, we have quite a wealth of knowledge on the panel for you. On the panel today, we have Colonel Nicholas Ryan, the Director of Army UAS Transformation at the Aviation Center of Excellence and lead of our first annual Army Best Drone Warfighter Competition. Additionally, we have CW5 Micah Amman from the Aviation Future Capabilities Directorate. And we also have Captain Kathryn Tenefrancia. Excuse me if I messed that up, but I'll get you all to announce yourselves and spell out your names just for the transcription as well as the media in just a second. But she's a captain, she's with 1st Armored Division, and she's also the Strike Troop Commander.
Just to go over a few ground rules before we get started, just a quick reminder. This interview was established to highlight the Army's first annual Best Drone Warfighter Competition. This event is sponsored by the Army Aviation Association of America. It's intended to be an annual event. This discussion will also amplify our POTUS and SecWar’s Drone Dominance Initiative with the key goal of bringing frontline drone operators, industry partners, and academic institutions together to expand drone dominance across the United States. So I'd ask that you please keep your questions focused accordingly to the Army Drone Competition and just drones specifically for this purpose within Huntsville, Alabama.
As always, should you have questions beyond the scope of today's discussion, ACO as well as myself will be ready to respond to any queries after the interview. Just a reminder, we are on the record today with comments attributable to each panel member by name. Feel free to record this discussion, although a transcript will also be made available for you. Following Colonel Ryan's opening remarks, I will be moderating questions and follow-on remarks. You may have one question and I will ask if you have one follow-up. If time permits, I will circle back for another round of questioning. Please wait to be called upon. I'll just give a reminder when we only have time for one more question or if something is just severely out of the scope. Ensure your phone or device is on mute when you are not communicating. We've allotted just one hour for this afternoon discussion. So we're scheduled to end at 1630 Eastern Standard Time, which is 4:30 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. Moving right along. Sir, if you have an opening statement or that you would like to tell the media and the rest of us, Colonel Ryan, the floor is yours.
Colonel Nicholas Ryan: All right, thank you, Vonnie. My name is Colonel Nicholas Ryan, N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S, R-Y-A-N. I am the Director of Army UAS at the Aviation Transformation Integration Directorate at Fort Rucker, Alabama. I've been working in the UAS space for about three years now. I was the former Capability Manager for UAS and then undergoing the T2COM transformation in the role I am in today. I was part of the Sec War’s Drone Dominance Team from the first time they wrote the Unleashing Drone Dominance memo through the Drone Gauntlet Program that's happening now. And I was the Army lead now for executing this competition.
So this competition is nested in the President's Unleashing American Drone Dominance from May of 2025 and the Secretary of War's Unleashing Military Drone Dominance from June of 2025. And that we need to improve our relationships and our partnerships with industry. We need to break down risk aversion and bureaucratic barriers and improve our access to technology and capabilities so that we can have the most effective and lethal military and Army
in the world. And this competition was born from that. There are joint competitions, drone competitions and allied drone competitions around the world that we do have an Army drone team that competes in those. But we saw a demand signal across the Army that our operational forces, our divisions, our corps, our special operations, our National Guard, our reserves, wanted to enhance and increase their ability to do drone dominance and integrate drones into their formations. They needed a way to do it and a catalyst to kind of spur that and achieve that level of excellence. And the Army and the military, since the Revolutionary War has always used competition as a way to achieve excellence.
Across the Army, we have other competitions like the Best Ranger, Best Zapper, Best Sniper, the Sullivan Cup, Sandhurst. And we saw with this new way of modern warfare, of incorporating robotics and drones, that we could achieve excellence through that by building out a competition to allow operational soldiers to demonstrate their capabilities in a competition setting. At the end of the day, it's not about receiving trophies or awards, it is about what lessons can we take from this to find out who the best operator is and how they became the best operator. What skills and resources and training allowed them to become the best operator? Who the best squad is and how they became the best squad. What equipment did they use? What tactics did they use? How did they train to become the best squad to employ drones to achieve their mission? And who's doing some amazing innovation out there across the Army that we can take and see what kind of innovation like grassroots soldier level innovation is happening, that we can then take and scale across the entire Army. So that's the bigger picture of this competition is obviously recognizing excellence and skill with the awards, but then taking what we can from that and scaling it across the Army to make the Army the most dominant drone force in the world. And that was what led to this competition. And as we continue this as an annual event, that will be the intent of it. Thank you.
LTCVW: Well, sir, I appreciate that magnificent stone setter. You might've just answered every question, but just in case, I will start with Sybil from USA Today. Do you have a question? Would you like to start with the first one, ma'am?
Sybil: Sir, yeah, thank you. I'm wondering what has this competition seeing how it's going forward revealed about where the Army is in terms of kind of closing the gap that's been identified on drones?
CNR: So this competition is very much revealing some of the skill sets that we need to improve upon and some of the training that we need to improve upon if we're really gonna integrate drones across the formation to do combined arms. So ultimately it's not just about who has the best technology, it really still comes down to the human skills of who can employ that technology the best and use it in the best way. And I think that's what we're really seeing out of this is which operators and which teams do it better than others and what is the human aspect of it that made them the best, not the technology that they had to use. And I think that at the broader Army level, and then she'll be able to kind of discuss at her unit level how that's helping her at the operational unit level.
Captain Kathryn Tenefrancia: Yes, I'm Captain Tenefrancia. I'm the multifunctional strike troop commander out of the Ready First Combat Team in the 1st Armored Division. So for context as for our formation, we set up really in July of this past year. We went to the National Training Center for rotation there and we're continuing to train teams. So I have a best drone team that's here as well as the best operator team. And so really this competition kind of helps us in multiple ways. One, just as Colonel Ryan said, in identifying training gaps. So these teams, they need to be able to move as a team, to be able to sense and to strike targets rapidly. And so
what we're identifying is what are those individual up to team tasks that these operators need to train to be more lethal? And how do we need to integrate both components? So being able to use, as he alluded to, the technical proficiency and then the tactical acumen, so their ability to conduct those both simultaneously.
So from observing different teams and speaking with some of the other leaders that are here, we're able to see best practices, what their training glide paths look like leading up to this. And we can identify with what other teams are successful with and what their training comes to in ways that we can improve our own training, which has been extremely helpful for us.
Sybil: Do you--to what extent do you foresee soldiers needing to get more and more specialized training in how to operate drones?
CKT: So our division commanders intent in the 1st Armored Division is to scale our training across our 19 Deltas or our cavalry scouts writ large. So for example, just in our brigade, over the past year, we initially trained about 30 operators. His goal by the end of 2026 is to move that up to about 100 operators. So this competition really helps us understand how we can best scale that, what are other brigades doing that's working and how we can achieve that goal. So what that means is that we need to be able to ensure that cavalry scouts can develop those specialized skills to be able to employ these on the battlefield. In my troop itself, our strike platoon, which is really the platoon that would be accomplishing these tasks, is composed of cavalry scouts, UAS operators, kind of a combination of MOSs, but they all need to be able to have the ability to employ these drones and have that technical ability to really, in the train up for this, one of our team members, for example, is Staff Sergeant Faino. He's a 19 Delta by trade. He's a cavalry scout. But over the last couple of months, we've trained him to be a member of this team and to be able to employ these assets. So really what we're trying to identify is the best training glide path we can create to train operators and scale across our division so that cavalry scouts can employ these assets.
CNR: And I think that's something in this competition that’s helpful because it's helping the Army see how do we do talent management, how do we select the right people to do this, and how do they fit into the formation at every echelon from squad, platoon, company, battalion, and who is the right operator. Before, it was usually--we had the trained MOS-15 series operators that were the Shadow operators, the Gray Eagle operators, and then other soldiers could fly just the Raven system. But now, as we proliferate drones and we're seeing where they best fit into the formation, what we're going through right now is deciding who is the right people to operate these and what level of training do they need. And this competition really helps pull that out. For this competition, we didn't specify what type of soldier, what branch MOS came here to do this, it was just send your best UAS operators.
And we're seeing a mix of soldiers that are either trained Army UAS operators or infantry soldiers, cavalry scout soldiers, like she mentioned, that didn't do this for a living but were trained to do it and still able to come here and compete. And then finding out more about their background, like did they do this as a hobby? Did they grow up doing it with their parents? Did they just learn it now? Was it just the Army that taught them how to do it? And what kind of mentality do they have that makes them the best operator? And this is one of the lessons we've been taking from Ukraine as well on how they identify and select and train their UAS operators and what we do here. And scaling this over to, I know Mr. Bearden here, he works in our Department of Evaluation and Standardization which is kind of like driving the standards that we're gonna use with that and the right people.
CW5 Kevin Bearden: Yeah, so one of the things we're learning as we're going through this competition is the perishable skills, right? So not all of them are drone operators. It's not their full-time job. So what is those skills that they need to train on to maintain and how often do they need to train on those skills? And that's what this competition's also helping us learn as we're going through this.
CNR: Yeah, so I think right now the Army's going towards realizing that it has to kind of be a dedicated assignment. Like you can't be a squad rifleman and a drone operator. Like it's one or the other because you have to have the level of skill and expertise in operating and employing the drones. That's what you have to be good at and train at and focus on for most of your time. And that's where like the formation that she talked about, these multifunctional reconnaissance companies or scout troops are starting to do that, to put together this organization of soldiers that are trained and skilled to do just that.
Sybil: Really, are soldiers that play video games better at flying drones?
CNR: That is actually what we're studying right now. That is how Ukraine does it. That's how they look at and select at the high school level like who they think would be the better drone operators based on some video game scores. And so that's something we're absolutely looking at right now as we go through this is the best soldiers that do this here as the best operators trying to gather more information just about them. Like, were you a good video gamer? Do you build drones in your basement for fun? What made you have this passion, this desire to be good at this?
LTCVW: All right, moving right along to Ms. Meredith from Janes. Do you have a question, ma'am?
Meredith Roaten: Thank you so much for doing this. I wanted to ask about the kinetic elements of this competition. If there were any kind of anti-armor simulations or anything like that. And if so, can you provide some details? If not, are you thinking about incorporating those into future competitions?
CNR: Yes, absolutely. So lethality obviously is one of the number one aspects from the Secretary of War's drone dominance guidance like making the force more lethal by incorporating and proliferating drones and robotics. And for this competition, we do have not live kinetic strikes, but we do have a kinetic aspect. It is part of the tactical squad hunter killer lane. And as part of that lane, it's a team of two soldiers, two drone operators that go out, perform tactical tasks, have to maneuver to a site and then launch their drones. The first drone is the hunter drone, their reconnaissance drone. And it's looking at an array of targets about a company size element of targets and trying to decide which one out of those are the most important targets. And then the other drone operator is carrying the killer drones, the smaller one-way lethal drones, but they're not kinetically lethal in this case. And then they have to use those to hit those targets.
So in this competition, it's just basically a net with a target on it. Like we do have the vehicle arrays out there that are plywood targets that they have to pick out and identify. And then when that killer drone is going, it's just flying into a net to hit the target and that counts as a hit. We did not go like live kinetic with anything that explodes for this competition. But at seeing that lethality is a very big aspect of proliferating these drones, like not just getting drones around the Army, but also the lethal capability on them, that's a big focus for us. And so the next competition next year, we are going to increase it and add more of those types of kinetic strikes. It may still not
be live because that kind of reduces the ability of the audience and the spectators to watch it, but we will absolutely incorporate more of those kind of probably inert non-lethal strikes just to show the skill of the operators to go after targets.
MR: Thank you so much.
LTCVW: Hey Meredith, do you have a follow up?
MR: I do really quickly on the kinetic strikes, do you know right now if you see that as a separate kind of curriculum from other types of drone operations, more on the ISR side? And how are you kind of assessing that path forward? Thanks.
CNR: I'll answer real quick from the Army side and I'm gonna let--I'm not gonna pronounce her name, Captain.
CKT: You can say Captain T, sir.
CNR: Captain T--I'm gonna let Captain T answer from the operational unit. So we actually--we see it as just a little bit more of an advanced skill set right now. So we are doing a lot and you already heard Captain T talk about all the training they're trying to do with their cavalry scout soldiers just to train them to be drone operators. Incorporating them in a lethal manner we see as just a little bit more advanced skill set. So what we're doing right now and we started it in August 2025 at Fort Rucker is the Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course, which is a new school we started at Fort Rucker that takes drone operators from across the Army but ones that are a little bit more experienced. They've been flying drones--there's certain criteria they have to meet. Then they come there and for a three-week course, they learn how to take those drones and employ them in a lethal way. And there we do fully employ live kinetic devices on our range at Fort Rucker.
And the goal is to train them how to do that so they're the advanced experts on that lethality and then they can take that skill set back to their home stations to start training their soldiers on how to do this. So it's more of they become like the master trainers that will then take that skill set to scale it across the Army. So we just started that program in August. We ran our second rotation. Pretty soon we're getting ready to run our third rotation of it. And then after that, the goal is to kind of package that as a standardized written package to spread that across the Army to let other units start to do similar types of training on lethal kinetics. I'm gonna let Captain T add in.
CKT: Oh, yes, sir. This is Captain Tenefrancia. So we conducted an FPV live strike at the National Training Center and our best drone operator who's here, he actually was the one who conducted that live strike. And I'll say that the team competition lane is constructed just in the way that we executed the FPV live strike at a brigade live fire where you have one member of a team with an ISR drone identifying and cueing that next person onto a target to strike. So for us, we want to be able to conduct FPV gunnery within our brigade in the next year. So really, we've been testing qualification tables to train operators to be able to accurately strike and working through what is the best way to train them through those. But just as the team lane does here where they have targetry they need to identify, they need to accurately strike, that's kind of how we've trained our operators in preparation for previous FPV live fires we've conducted.
LTCVW: Thanks Captain Tenefrancia. Meghann Myers from Defense One, do you have a question? Meghann, can you hear me? Okay, Chris Panella from Business Insider, do you have a question?
Chris Panella: Hey, I do. Thanks for doing this. I'm wondering if you can speak more on different challenges presented in scenarios and whether there were inclusions of like electronic warfare or jamming or things like that, anything that kind of would replicate real world challenges that operators would then have to adapt to? Thanks.
CNR: Yeah, so this is Colonel Ryan again. So we did not incorporate that in this competition as the first competition, although it is absolutely an intent and desire to do that in the future to make it more challenging. We do have representatives here from the Army Cyber Center of Excellence and they're watching the competition and observing it and gathering those lessons for that exact intent to see how can they inject those challenges and those capabilities in the future, both from an adversary standpoint and a friendly standpoint. And that's something we see how they operate in Ukraine, that those operators need to be able to understand the electronic spectrum, see what's being jammed and adjust their drone and the bandwidth they're using to operate within that environment at any given moment. And so adding that as an aspect and a challenge in the future is going to be our intent. We are already working on how to do that. We just did not do that for this one this time.
LTCVW: Chris, do you got a follow-up?
CP: Yeah, I'm also wondering if you can elaborate on the types of drones used, were they all FPV capable and if they were like from specific--it sounds like there's vendors there, so from specific companies, like what's kind of the outlook there? Thank you.
CNR: Yeah, so I'll talk from the broader, the whole competition and I'll let Captain T kind of talk about her specific unit because it is unique to each unit. So what we put out for the three competition lanes--so there's three lanes. The first lane, the best operator lane, which is an FPV head-to-head race through an obstacle course. For that one, and we took this observation lesson from watching other like drone competitions, you see them on ESPN sometimes or at the joint competitions that our Army drone team went to. We decided to issue everybody a standard common baseline drone, an FPV drone. So they all had the same equipment and then we could just evaluate the skill of the operator versus comparing one person's equipment to the other, maybe one's more expensive because they could spend more money than the other one. We wanted to level of playing field on the equipment and just test the skills of the operator. So for that lane--and it was our lead sponsor who's the Army Aviation Association of America as a nonprofit agency, we asked them to identify and select a vendor that would be willing to donate and provide that equipment. In that case, they selected a Neros Archer and so that's the common drone that these soldiers are flying today. For the competition, doesn't mean it's associated with anything in the Army or any program of record, it is just what our nonprofit sponsors selected as the common drone to use for the best operator lane.
For the tactical squad lane, we told the units, bring whatever you have, as long as it's NDA compliant. Whether you received it as an Army program of record, you bought it like off the shelf from the blue list, or you built it yourself, you 3D printed it and built it yourself, bring whatever you have, the one ISR and up to the five killer drones, as long as you can carry them in your back and your rucksack, because that's part of the tactical lane is carry your equipment and execute it that way. So we didn't care what kind of drones they brought.
And then for the best innovation lane, that literally is soldiers designing their own thing at their home station in an innovation lab, 3D printing it and building it as long as it used NDA compliant components and demonstrating what that is. So there's no specific name to that drone, it's
whatever they built. And so Captain T kind of highlight what her unit, what they use and what they brought.
CKT: Yes, so my team, we brought two types of, you know, equipment. So we have our Skydio ISR drone that we've had in the unit for a couple of years now, but----
CNR: Which is a fielded program of record.
CKT: ----which is a fielded program of record. And then we have Neros Archers as well. And those FPVs we procured prior to our NTC rotation. So we've had those for about six months now.
CNR: That was a cost [crosstalk] purchased.
CKT: Yes, sir. So we've used those, so our operator who's doing the best drone operator has familiarity with the archers. I will say that one of the greatest opportunities here that we've had is at the practice range actually, because there are operators from every single unit with the drones that they're using for the best team competition that have all different types of drones. So ones that they've pretty much created, fabricated portions of themselves, they've purchased from other places. And the operators are really sharing lessons learned and allowing each other to kind of work with each other's drones, even test flight some of them. So it's giving our operators opportunity to experience some other drones other units have, share lessons learned and best practices. And so I really think that practice range has given units a lot of opportunity to see what other units are doing best.
CNR: And that--she highlighted something that that fabrication and modification aspect is also something that we've taken from Ukraine, because that's what their operators do. And it's necessary for them to adjust their equipment to meet their mission demands. We've kind of been a little bit constrained in that ability. But that came out in the Secretary of War's drone dominance guidance too, that we need to have the right to repair. We need to allow our soldiers to fabricate and modify equipment that meets their needs and suits their needs. So we've worked a lot across the Army on various policies or doctrine or things that affect that, such as our airworthiness releases, the way we write contracts when we buy equipment, the type of access we have to the equipment from the vendor when we're talking about intellectual property rights, so that our soldiers can do these modifications and fabrications right there to make the drone do what they need it to do at that moment. And we're also training our soldiers to do this. It is now built into our UAS training courses, teaching them how to 3D print, how to design, how to code, and how to build their own drones.
LTCVW: All right, thank you very much. Zita from Forbes, do you have a question?
Zita Ballinger Fletcher: Hi, I'm asking this for Military Times. I just would like to know if, so what you're seeing now, it's lending itself to drone use becoming a set specialization rather than something that will be adopted by everyone in all units? Or it's a specific skill set that's being established? Like more people are having a knack for using them than other people? Is that what's coming out through this?
CNR: I think what we're seeing is that it is gonna be a common capability and piece of equipment across every formation, every type, any group of soldiers. It is just a training set that we're realizing any soldier, any MOS will probably have a little bit extra specialized training to be able to do this.
CW5KB: I think it's the mission set that will dictate how it's trained.
CNR: Yeah, yeah, because there's gonna be so many mission sets that the drones can do and various types of technology across ranges of autonomy. And so that's something we're looking at very closely as well. Like as an example, if we're just have a cargo drone that's flying boxes of MREs from point A to point B back and forth and not doing much else and it's not a very risky mission, that doesn't take a higher level of skill. Or if that drone has a lot of autonomy where the operator only has to put in point A, put in point B, and push a button to launch it and then it just does it by itself, that doesn't take a lot of skill and training. Whereas if we have a FPV style drone that is lethal and armed and we expect that soldier to hit a very precise target at a very precise point through a very congested and contested battle space with jamming and everything else, that soldier is going to need a much higher level of skill and training. So Mr. Bearden is absolutely right. It is more so designed on what mission set, what echelon, and what are they doing with the drone and what do we expect them to do with it? And that's kind of what we're working on designing right now.
And these lanes absolutely inform and tell us that what kind of skills do we need to train to make them the best at what we expect them to do. And so these lanes incorporate Army tasks already, like Captain T was saying, that tackle squad lane, it's things they're already trained on, they already have to do. So it's not just a competition thing for the sake of getting points and getting a trophy, it's things they should already be trained on anyway and we're just finding out who's the best at it.
ZBF: And I'd like to also ask, do you anticipate operators ever using swarms or testing swarm technology? Because we're seeing a lot about this technology coming out that a single person can operate multiple unmanned systems at once. Do you anticipate that that might ever be tested in a competition like this?
CNR: Testing? Do you want to hit on the testing side of it? And then announce your name.
CW5 Micah Amman: Sure, so CW5 Micah Amman from the Future Capability Office, or directorate. I think your question was specific to future Best Drone Competitions. Sir, I would absolutely defer to you. I think that would be something that we would want to explore but I wouldn't be able to answer that.
CNR: Yeah, I think we're--from the experiment, but what we're already doing.
CW5MA: From what the rest of the Army is doing outside of the competition, I think we absolutely have looked at that. I think that open source, you can see that we've done that and I think you see a demand to do that through autonomous solutions. And I think that the term swarm, it means something different to everyone when we say it. We do need to mass. Whether we mass through a bomb at coordinate solution with no human in or out of the loop or whether we mass with FPV control and lots of things at the same time or one or many of the aircraft in the flight are sharing a single commander's intent and objective in the mission. We're not--we're going to have to mass to overwhelm the enemy's air defense capability, both kinetic and non-kinetic. And in the same way that we see Russia and Ukraine fighting every day right now. We're full size are going to send mass, whether or not it fits the future definition of swarm or not, that's to be determined.
CNR: Yeah, and so I'll answer from the competition perspective and then maybe Captain T can kind of highlight it from like her operator perspective. So I don't think that's something we're gonna do in the near future on competitions, mainly just because like you mentioned, the technology is there. It's being tested out there. Some vendors say they can do it. We don't see it to the point yet as something we just, we actually want in the Army and want to use in the Army. It's not there just yet. And so by this competition--probably not next year's competition, but that is absolutely a task and a requirement we do want to incorporate, which we kind of refer to as the one to many control. So one operator controlling many drones simultaneously. And from the operator standpoint, that Captain T can probably highlight here, like a tactical squad lane, it's two operators, one operator just flying one ISR drone because that's all they can do. And the other operator flying the killer drones, but they can only launch one at a time. Like they can't do all five at once. And it would make them much more effective and lethal if they could do that one to many.
CKT: Definitely, I think the--really, that's been a point I think that, I don't know from observations today, but a lot of the teams, last night at the team brief, that was a major point of discussion is how to effectively employ those five drones for those engagements. And that's an area where a lot of people are focusing their efforts because that's how they can maximize their lethality. So being able to do that either in a way where you can deploy them at once to mass as chief was saying, is definitely a place where we'd all like to get. I do know that from a user perspective or from a unit perspective, that in training, we have been challenged by experiencing swarms ourselves and planning for that even on the counter UAF side of things as well. So it's definitely something that end users are thinking about, planning for. But really, massing on the enemy is something that, I think a lot of units are trying to experiment with and find the best method for.
LTCVW: All right, thank you. Corey Dickstein from Stars and Stripes. Please forgive me if I mispronounced your last name. But Corey, do you have a question, sir?
Corey Dickstein: Yes, thank you. Corey Dickstein with Stars and Stripes. I appreciate y'all doing this. First, Chief and Captain, can we get you guys to spell your names for us?
CW5MA: Yes, sir. So two CW5s in the room. I'm Micah, M-I-C-A-H, Amman, A-M-M-A-N. And I'll let Kevin.
CW5KB: Kevin, just like it sounds, K-E-V-I-N, Bearden, B-E-A-R-D-E-N.
CKT: And I apologize, my name is a mouthful. So my first name is Kathryn, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N. And my last name is Tenefrancia, spelled T-E-N-E-F-R-A-N-C-I-A.
CD: Thank you, guys. I would ask, as you guys go through this competition this week, I'm curious, you know, with this being such an emerging technology and, you know, kind of a dive in and learn what you can situation, I'm wondering if you've already taken anything away that maybe surprised you or learned something new that soldiers out there are doing that you've not thought about before, you know, something kind of like that.
CNR: Yeah, so I can start. We're already--this competition is already generating a number of lessons and observations for us that we didn't even anticipate or think about when we designed the competition. We knew we'd get some things and we had some focus areas, but it is already opening up so much more that we didn't know and that we wouldn't have known unless we even did this competition and designed the lanes we did. So it's significant value already in doing
that. So as an example, on the tactical squad lane, that's the team of two soldiers going out and their unit selected them because they were the best operators. They could do the physical activity like carrying the rucksack full of things so they were physically fit. But what we're seeing is once they get to like their hide site and their launch site and they actually have to start launching these drones and like talking and communicating as the reconnaissance drone is identifying the targets and then he has to inform the killer drone operator which targets to hit from what angle, what it looks like. We're seeing kind of a breakdown in that communication because they haven't been trained in that. And in Army aviation, we call that crew coordination.
Like two people in a helicopter talking to each other, explaining what they're seeing, what they're doing and what they need the other person to be doing. And we're kind of seeing that breakdown happen up there that we never anticipated, but it's definitely something that we're seeing in the lane is just how well they talk to each other and can share that target information and get the drones to do then what they need them to do to hit the right targets. So that's an example of something we didn't anticipate but it's absolutely standing out as that is something we as an Army need to do better on. If we're gonna proliferate these drones and want them to be more effective and lethal, we just need to improve on how our soldiers talk to each other to communicate when they're using them and employing them.
LTCVW: Sir, do you have a follow up?
CNR: Mr. Bearden wanted to add something.
CW5KB: Yeah, in our innovation lane--our innovation lane we're seeing a lot of things that we haven't seen before as well. So that's been kind of a great thing that we're seeing what the units are doing at their home station and the ideas that they're coming up with. And I want to stress that all the other units are seeing this as well. So all these lessons learned that one unit's doing, all the other units are getting to see this and capture these lessons. So it's spreading out across the Army as a force.
CNR: Is there anything, Captain T, that you've seen just as an operational unit with your soldiers or anything else?
CKT: Yes, sir, I think just one on that last point. For each of us, a lot of this innovation is starting from the unit level and we're really--soldiers from the bottom up are providing feedback that helps us innovate. But every unit experiences and has different resources available to them. They have a different installation to work from. So being able to talk to other units about I'm facing this challenge or this barrier and talking to another unit and figuring out what they've done to push through that or other methods that they've used has already helped our unit figure out ways that we can be better on our installation and things that we can do to facilitate home station training that really unleashes this and allow soldiers to, just like any other training, walk out into the back 40 and conduct some of this training to be better, to be more lethal and to allow our soldiers to do this more easily. So I think that's been one thing.
And then the other piece is just on that tactical lane. So having our team be able to, just as Colonel Ryan said, really like the crew commands and that team cohesion, every unit has different standard operating procedures and that's something we've continued to try to refine. So how do they communicate, what reports--what all that looks like, but really communicating with other teams from all their different experiences, particularly for us, I'm from an armored brigade combat team, but we can learn so much from the MBCTs or some of the other units that have a different mission but maybe have learned things that we haven't got the opportunity to
learn. So really being able to maximize all the sharing of knowledge to kind of learn some of those lessons through them and it's been really helpful.
LTCVW: All right, Corey, do you have a follow-up?
CD: Yeah, just quickly, when did you guys decide that you would have the competition and kind of briefly, but how difficult was it to build this competition from the ground floor?
CNR: Yeah, so like I said, I was on the SecWar’s Drone Dominance Team and helped write the Drone Dominance Guidance which was published in June. Shortly after that, we stood up the Army Drone Team which is very similar to like the Army Parachute Team, the Army Marksmanship Team, like a single Army team that goes out and competes against other joint forces or allied partners just to kind of demonstrate the skills of the Army. So we did that also in June and had them starting to compete but then we started to see a pretty big demand signal from divisions, operational forces across the Army starting to speak up and say, hey, we're doing a lot with drones here at our installation. We think we're pretty good and we wanna demonstrate our skills, so can we start getting involved in some of those competitions at the highest levels? And so it was really August of 2025 that the idea was born like we need to have an Army competition for this to give those units a goal to get to as they start building out their own drone programs at their installations, give them that goal, get them something to look at to achieve, to try and win, and also give them a little bit of driving and training guidance like, hey, we're gonna train you and test you on these tasks. So these are the things you should be trying to get good at at your installations as you're building out your drone programs and that's kind of just as a CAD, that's how we envision the future competition.
So as we're already thinking about next year's competition, we're like, what are the highest priority things the Army wants us to be able to do with our drones? And I already mentioned lethality. We already talked about flying in a congested environment with electronic warfare and building those into the lane and telling the units that that's what they're gonna compete to and then that drives them to start training against those things, which again, great that you can do it in a competition, even better if you can do that if we ever got called to go do it somewhere else. And so that's how we're thinking about is, what should we be pushing as a competition that are the highest priority things our units should be training on to get really good at for their job in the Army?
Now, the difficulty of pulling this off with the idea born in August until now, it was a lot of support and effort from multiple agencies. So all across the Army from T2COM, the Combined Arms Center, the Maneuver Center of Excellence, and a lot of our partners, DEVCOM in the Army, and then our lead sponsor, the Army Aviation Association of America, pulling together the event, the registration, donating funds to support it. The City of Huntsville and the University of Alabama Huntsville that has the range, the UAS range that we're using, so the land and the airspace that we're using and allowing us to do this competition there. And then just the vendors contributing and supporting, like we mentioned, donating their equipment, helping out with some training and some other aspects of this. And then just a multitude of volunteers pulling this together. So in that short timeframe, which also included the shutdown that we experienced and still pulling this off and executing it on time and on schedule as we did, has been a phenomenal effort across the board from all parties. And now as we look forward, at least we have about a year to plan the next one. So we've already got a pretty good lead time on it.
LTCVW: All right, thank you, sir. Drew Lawrence from Defense Scoop, do you have a question?
Drew Lawrence: Hey, thanks, yep. I appreciate you guys having me. Two questions and then Colonel Wright, I have a RFI for you that might be helpful for folks after this round table. But first question is, in the beginning of conversations, you said the competition is revealing some of the skillsets soldiers need to improve on. And one of your responses, you gave a vignette on the communication aspect, but I'm wondering if you could be specific to some of the--like the other skills that need to be improved on. And then what did you see soldiers do well in the competition?
CNR: Okay. Some of the other things to improve on, which kind of gets back up to us at the Army level, is kind of just standardizing some things. Because right now it's moving so fast and technology and things are changing so rapidly, we're kind of learning as we go. And so this competition was pretty open and free to let units bring what they're doing at the lowest soldier level so we can see what's really working out there. What are the soldiers doing out there and what can we take and scale? So another example that we've kind of seen is when we're sending soldiers out to carry this equipment as part of a squad or a platoon, and they're carrying it in their rucksack, like what is too much? What is too much equipment? Like how many batteries? How many drones? What types of controllers? It gets to the one to many control as well. What types of payloads? And how many is too many? Like if we load them up with 20 killer drones, can they carry that many? Or is five about the max they can carry in their rucksack that has all their other gear and equipment too? So kind of developing a standard packing list for a drone operator is one thing out of this competition that we haven't defined or said yet, but we're definitely seeing a range of solutions from soldiers. Some soldiers are packing very light and very minimal. And some soldiers are like carrying the kitchen sink on their back.
And just seeing that and kind of deciding like, could they really walk like 10 miles carrying that? Which we actually as part of the competition did wanna include like a 10-mile ruck march in the challenge to force them to carry that amount of weight that far. We just didn't have time to do it here in the two days of this competition. But again, incorporating something like that in the future to have soldiers prove that this is something you could actually carry and employ in that type of an environment.
Some of the really good things we're seeing is the soldiers’ ability to adapt to new pieces of equipment. So like I mentioned, we chose that FPV drone just to be a common drone for all the soldiers to use so that variable was equal. Some units had already had it and trained on it, some hadn't. They'd trained in similar types of equipment and capability, but when they got here, they all received about two hours’ worth of familiarization training from--the company provided some trainers, and then they were expected to go out on the lane and compete with it. And being able to see that a skilled UAS operator, if they're trained in UAS operations and flying UAS and drones, it really doesn't matter what the piece of equipment is, as long as they get a general good familiarization on it, they will be able to employ it. Because that's how we see drone dominance in the proliferation happening anyway, is as technology changes so fast, units and soldiers are gonna be getting new pieces of equipment so often that we can't afford to send them back through like a two- or three-week training program every time they get a new piece of equipment. They just have to be able to receive something, be good enough at the general operations that they can just get a quick familiarization and then go and employ it. And we are already seeing that, that our skilled operators can pick up the new equipment, learn it very quickly and go fly it. So that was definitely something that stood out as very impressive here too.
And then just the phenomenal innovation of our soldiers. I mean, across the board, like they're 3D printing things to make their kit easier, like for the tactical squad lane, like things that will carry their antennas on their back, mounts for their FPV goggles on their helmets that don't exist
in the Army today. These are soldiers that's 3D printing these things and bringing them with them. And then the stuff we're seeing in the innovation lane from the soldiers are just designing themselves with the resources they have available. It's phenomenal stuff. And so it's just--it's very eye-opening to see how amazing it can be when you just give soldiers an opportunity to do stuff. Captain T.
CKT: Yes, so for--I think for us, in terms of those specific tasks to train, it's really everything that goes into that launch site occupation. So as was discussed, that soldier load, what are they carrying? What do they need to carry? And then really the soldiers understanding everything in the operational environment to be able to execute tasks from that launch site. So for our team, for example, they 3D printed a lot of their kits so that they can pretty much carry their ground control station on their back so they can rapidly employ their drones once they're able to identify a target. But really training all those tasks that go into occupying the launch site, establishing all of their equipment, identifying, cueing, and striking. Those are really the key tasks that we see some variability in capability. The best teams are extremely--doing extremely well at it. And that's where I intend to focus on my effort as a commander to--across my formation.
CNR: Mr. Bearden, is there anything you saw?
CW5KB: So you actually hit the commonality of being able to take a system that I've been flying at at a home station and then come here, get two hours’ worth of training, you know, two hours, but two hours’ worth of training and be able to adapt to that very quickly and be proficient at it. It was eye-opening to me. Personally, I think we could probably as an Army work on commonality of control. Don't really care about what the platform is to even make that more streamlined. But you've said it, sir, how fast they adapted. It was really impressive.
DL: Thank you. My second question, you know, part of the drone dominance guidance was about removing bureaucracy. You might have mentioned that in the beginning of the conversation. Throughout the planning or execution stage of this competition, did you face any red tape? And if so, how did you cut through it?
CNR: Honestly, I don't think at our level we faced a lot of red tape that was a major issue for us that impacted our ability to do this competition. The biggest limiting factor for us was just the time available on the range to execute the full competition and make it more challenging and broader. We could have already brought in all those aspects that I mentioned, like the lethal integration, the kinetic strikes, the electronic warfare if we wanted to. We just chose to not bring that level of challenge in as we only had like those few months to just pull off the competition in general. But now that we're already where we are, we're already looking ahead at adding that. So I have not experienced any of that bureaucracy or red tape that hindered our ability to do this competition. Because I have seen across the Army, everybody is taking that to heart and changing as fast as they can to break through those barriers and get through that. But that's another great aspect of this competition too, that we're actually gathering lessons and Captain T may be able to hit on these.
Every time we think we've broken down an obstacle or a friction or some bureaucracy or red tape that was holding us up and we just pat ourselves on the back, we run into the next thing that we didn't know was there because nobody had ever gotten to that point before because they were always stuck at the first one. And so as we break down these barriers, more pop up, but we're working through them as fast as we can. And so at the broadest level, we didn't experience anything. I don't know if Captain T, like at her installation, if there was anything local that affected your ability to kind of train for this.
CKT: I think our installation has done a lot in the last six months to kind of reduce all of those barriers. But what we have been able to find is ways that other units that are here at this competition have optimized their training home station. So for example, some of them have created areas within their brigade footprints where they can fly. And so for example, their teams could just walk out straight out to their brigade area and conduct training there. So it's things like that that we discuss with units. What are the ways they're able to resource it? What are other ways that they were able to establish systems like that? Even units that are using their CNC labs to create frames for drones, things like that. Like what are they using for it? And units here are sharing so much knowledge and information with each other that it's really helping us move past some of those barriers if any other units are having them. So I think that's been helpful for us, but we've had a lot of support within the last six months in terms of reducing those so that our teams could train. And prior to this, our division held a competition, so all the operators that are here trained up, performed well at our division competition in preparation and trained based on the guidelines for this competition.
DL: Got it, thank you. And Colonel Wright, just a question for the--that might be helpful for the group. But after this, would you be able to send this to some information about the scope of the competition? I know you said that there were over 100 competitors, but maybe like a breakdown of how many teams, what units they came from, the lanes they participated in and the standards that they had to hit to successfully navigate those lanes. And also what Shark Tank style engagement means. That'd be great.
LTCVW: Sure, I'll send that right out.
DL: Thanks.
LTCVW: Absolutely. Ashley from Breaking Defense, do you have a question?
Ashley Roque: Yes, I do. Thanks. Hi Colonel, a couple of follow-ups. Just one, I guess on Drew's question about red tape. I know we've talked in the past about FLIPLs. Has that just sort of--has that been with the drone dominance, is that no longer an issue for soldiers at this point?
CNR: Ashley, of course you'd ask that question. [laughter] They even told me not to say anything that would get me in trouble with the Chief of Staff of the Army, but it's okay. Don't quote that, Ashley.
AR: Is there more work to do on it then? Like just give us a brief update.
CNR: Yeah, so a lot is changing in that aspect too. So part of the drone dominance at the Department of the Army level now, and the Chief of Staff of the Army has now appointed his own drone dominance director that works with the SecWar’s drone dominance teams, now they host weekly drone dominance meetings focused on very specific problem sets that are plaguing the Army. And one of them absolutely is the property accountability, the property management. So the FLIPLs are not a problem anymore. They are no longer an issue. Really now what it is is kind of defining, as we proliferate drones, like in the thousands, in the tens of thousands, and we're allowing units to acquire them in a multitude of ways, whether they build them themselves, or they are fielded them, or given to them from like the drone dominance program gauntlet that's happening right now as well, or they're buying them through the Army's UAS marketplace that is getting ready to open here pretty soon, trying to just define like what category of property they
fall into. Are they gonna be attritable? Are they gonna be consumable, expendable, or durable? And things like that.
So it's less about the FLIPLs and worrying about the property, it's more just how do we account for this volume and proliferation and number of drones that are going to be coming into the force. As part of that, those drone dominance working groups that the Army is hosting, the installation training resources is another huge one that we talk about every single week that covers the resources at every installation in the Army and the national training, or the combat training centers, including like the spectrum availability, the airspace availability and the access to the airspace, the ranges to do the live and lethal training with drones, and what policies and procedures do we need to adjust and change across the Army to get to that point. So basically build this baseline that allows our units and our soldiers to train the way they need to without running into a lot of bureaucratic red tape. So that's just two examples. There's a couple more very key focus drone dominance working groups that we're working at the Army level, but those are a few.
CW5KB: And the only thing I would add is that--CW5 Bearden--as we're experimenting, there is some expectation that because we're experimenting, not everything's going to work. And so we're going to have to absorb some of that cost to experiment. So I think that's kind of a way to look at it as well when we're talking, you know, is it FLIPL or is it a 15-6 investigation? We also just have to understand that a lot of this is experimentation.
CNR: Yeah, absolutely. And he makes a great point that I've talked to a couple other reporters have asked me about this, because they see the stories and the articles about soldiers flying things at a CTC rotation or an installation, and it's crashing, it's not working, it's breaking, whatever. But that always happens. That always has happened with any piece of equipment in the Army. That's part of the experimentation. The big difference is in the past, we would spend years doing that experimentation like behind closed doors, behind curtains, in a very formal experimentation test site. And so all those crashes and failures, what happened is just nobody would know about it because it was very protected as an experiment. Now with how fast the Army is moving, we're just giving the kit as fast as we can out to soldiers and units, basically in a live experiment. That's what our TIC units, the Transform in Contact Units, are, is an experimentation force to field equipment to as fast as possible, fully understanding that it may not work right. But that's a lot of answers to that as well. It may not be the material that's failing, we just may not have trained our soldiers good enough to employ it, or given them the time to learn it, or have the proper skillset. So things are happening like that, and it's just like we're moving so fast that there's definitely gonna be some times we fail, but we're failing fast, we're failing forward, we're learning from it, and we're getting so much better as an Army than if we just waited for stuff to pass through a traditional experimentation model before we fielded it.
AR: And do you have time for just one quick follow-up on that?
CNR: Please, please, go ahead. If Colonel Wright is okay with it.
AR: Okay, and it's just--okay, so sort of on the failing and training, you have this October date to have like these small one-way attack drones at every squad. So sort of what are you learning? Are you going to be able to material meet that date? And at what point can each squad actually be able to operate and have the capability and the training to operate these drones?
CNR: So the material side, I'm not gonna answer here, because there's so much more tied to that. That is way above my level as far as achieving that guidance from the drone dominance memo. The training aspect of it is absolutely another topic that we are looking at as well. Like even if we started fielding this many drones, do we have the units and the soldiers and the training to absorb them and to start flying them? So it was actually part of the drone dominance program at the SecWar level with the gauntlet that they have going on right now where their intent is to very quickly field 10,000 drones within 90 days. And then I forget what the incremental numbers are, but I know it's a lot very quickly. But part of that, because I've been working with that team too, is as we start to identify which actual units will be fielded those numbers of thousands of drones, we have to kind of report back up to the Department of War to show--each service has to do this, to show these are the units we think we wanna field these things to first and they can actually employ these immediately because they do have the trained soldiers. They do have the installation resources like airspace and spectrum and ranges to employ these. They do have a need for them. They do have a training plan to use and employ these things. So we're not just gonna blindly start delivering thousands of drones to every unit out there and just let them sit in boxes while we wait for them to be employed. Each service has to respond back up to show, as soon as I receive these, I can employ them the next day. I'm not gonna be hindered by any local things that prevent me from doing that.
LTCVW: All right, I'm sorry, team. I only got time for one more question before Colonel Ryan has to hit the road here. Mr. Dan Schere from Inside Defense, do you have a question?
Dan Schere: Yeah, just one quick one and one follow-up. Just can you quickly say like, was it mainly group one and two type of drones or what sizes were used in the experiment?
CNR: In this competition, we did limit it to group one and two for this competition and the lanes were designed around that but for future competitions, we're already looking at how could we incorporate like group three and things like that, like the larger drones as well and the facilities to do that.
DS: Sure, and then just one thing I wanted to ask, I had talked with someone recently who used to work in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and she was saying that over there, soldiers train with three to five drones each on each type of system for the systems that are smaller and can be destroyed easily and I'm just wondering if the Army right now has the capacity to train with that many types of drones of each system or do you think that, I mean, do we still have a long way to go to sort of get to that capacity?
CNR: So we do--we actually are training our UAS operators--our Army designated UAS operators which are the 15 Whiskeys by their military occupational specialty. They used to be the Shadow operators but now they're tactical UAS operators and we are redesigning that training to make them now a 15 X-ray and what we are doing is kind of to your point is we are training them on group one through three, a sampling of drones across group one through three that are the most common like quadcopters, maybe a couple fixed wing capabilities, some VTOL like vertical takeoff and landing capabilities with the intent that if they're a good operator and they are just familiar on a handful of those common drones from group one through three, then like we mentioned earlier, they should be able to receive a new platform and incorporate that relatively quickly with some basic familiarization and those 15 X-rays are--they're being trained to do that so that when they are down in a BCT and that BCT receives a new piece of equipment, that 15 X-ray will be the first one to train on it, figure it out, and then it's their job to train and integrate it across the entire formation. So that's how we're kind of getting after the
multiple platforms because we kind of are expecting that there will almost never again be a common platform across the entire Army.
Every unit will do it differently because every unit has a different mission set and a different need and that's kind of the point of the UAS marketplace is to open up options and capability so that a unit can select and choose what capability best fits their mission and their needs. I'm gonna let Captain T add from the soldier training perspective on like too many systems or not enough.
CKT: So in our formation, we train our operators across, I mean, I think just in my 10 years, like five different types of drones, either ones that we're using, ones that they build in the FPV course, ones that we utilize at a CTC rotation or on a rotation somewhere else. Well, what we've seen is a lot of transfer of skills from different drone types once they're through a foundational course. But I think one of the most valuable things for us has been establishing that baseline across multiple different drone types because that gives the commander a lot more options in terms of what they're able to use. But I think for us, we've seen that our soldiers are able to transfer their skills from one type to another once they establish that baseline.
The other thing like in the lead up to this competition is that in simulators, which we focus a lot of our time for our training at, soldiers can change the type of drone that they're using in that simulator. So for example, all the soldiers that were preparing for this competition, they knew what drone was gonna be used for the best operator. And in simulators, you can choose a drone that has similar specifications, if not the exact specifications of that drone type. So they could get a feel for it in the simulators. And we've found a strong correlation between soldier performance in simulator and their performance in live flights through our FPV courses. So that's another opportunity where soldiers can develop skills using different drone types.
CNR: Yeah, and we are absolutely, like simulations is absolutely something we as an Army are leaning heavily into as we proliferate drones because we just--it kind of to your point, like we just can't fly that many, can't buy that many. To Ashley's point, we almost can't destroy that many. We don't have the airspace like across the Army to just fly thousands of drones every single day, plus manned helicopters, plus shoot artillery and everything else. And so trying to balance it with how can we better incorporate simulation training and simulation devices into this, even to the one to many question about swarms that was asked earlier, like if a soldier can fly one live drone, they could probably train to fly 100 drones in a simulation. We don't need to launch 100 drones just to prove that a soldier can fly that swarm of 100 live out on a range.
So we're definitely heavily leaning into simulation to get after that training. And even working with vendors and stuff that as we're rapidly fielding new kits, it should come with like a simulation training program so that we can get that to the units first, they can already start training their operators on it, and so by the time that the boxes of new platforms arrive and they open them up to start flying them, they've already built 100 hours in the simulator learning how to fly that platform. And so we absolutely are leveraging that. And we did use an aspect of that for this competition too, and trying to make that better in the future.
Now to the other side of it, like the multiple drones, one of the Army's solutions that we've also been pursuing for a while and continue to need and prioritize is the universal controller, which is basically if we had a single universal controller, which we are working on and designing, that the operators learn just to use that one controller, just like a kid can use an Xbox or a PlayStation controller to play any video game. If we can teach our operators to use that one controller and it has the ability to inject any new UAS platform on it, but the controller works the same, it's the
same buttons, the same controls, or the same user interface, that greatly increases--reduces the amount of training, reduces the cost, and greatly increases the effectiveness and lethality of those operators to employ a variety of systems. And so that's something we do not have yet, but we are working on and pursuing. It's kind of in the test and development phase right now, but something we as an Army are really pushing to get out very quickly, because that almost is like the secret sauce that ties all this together, if we have that common universal controller.
LTCVW: All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all the time we have, unfortunately. I appreciate you all for coming. Colonel Ryan, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to provide any closing comments that you have, sir.
CNR: What I hope you brought from this engagement today is that this Army competition, as the first one of many, is not just a competition to award points and hand out trophies, it's really to make the Army better and find the lessons, improve on things and share those best practices across the Army to improve and help us achieve that drone dominance as we continue to pursue this, and then to continue to make it better and more relevant and more challenging as we move forward in the future for that sole purpose of making the Army better. Thank you.
LTCVW: All right, sir, distinguished panelists, I appreciate the time you spent with the reporters today. Any media, please feel free to reach out to me with any of your RFIs or queries, but that's all the time we have today. Please feel free to reach out. All right, thank you very much. Don't forget, a transcript will be allotted to you in a couple hours.
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