COL Ryan Bell JRTC Virtual MRT Engagement
Date: June 25, 2026 Time: 10:00 a.m. PM Duration: 1 hour, 10 minutes, 17 seconds
Participants:
• Moderator: Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright (Army Public Affairs)
• Speaker: Colonel Richard Ryan Bell (Commander, 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division)
• Reporters:
• Vago Muradian (Defense and Aerospace Report)
• Mike Brest (Washington Examiner)
• Greg Jaffe (New York Times)
• Chris Panella (Business Insider)
• Drew Lawrence (Defense Scoop)
• Hope Seck (Military Times)
• Meredith Roaten (Janes)
• Lauren C. Williams (Defense One)
• Daniel Schere (Inside Defense)
• Mark Pomerleau (Breaking Media)
• Corey Dickstein (Stars and Stripes)
• Matthew Beinart (Access Intel)
• Evan Lynch (Signal Magazine)
Transcript
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right. Good morning, everyone. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Vonnie Wright with Army Public Affairs, and I'll be moderating today's media roundtable. We are fortunate to have direct, firsthand insight into the Army's continuous transformation initiatives and tactical combat lessons from the Screaming Eagles. Joining us on the line is Colonel Richard Ryan Bell, commander of the 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), who is now available for your questions.
Before we get started, just a quick reminder on the ground rules pertaining to this morning's discussion. This interview is established to discuss lessons learned from their critical training rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, LA, to certify their readiness to rapidly deploy anywhere in the world, while simultaneously adapting to the modern battlefield by testing new and innovative systems, technologies, and formations as part of the Army's continuous transformation. The Screaming Eagles are leading the next evolution of vertical envelopment, and we'll discuss how they've created a culture of evolution and innovation, gaining actionable results for the warfighter. I'd ask that you please keep your questions focused accordingly. As always, if you have questions beyond the scope of today's discussion, HQDA Public Affairs Office will be ready to respond to queries after the interview.
We are on the record today with comments attributable to Colonel Bell. Feel free to record this discussion, although a transcript will also be made available. Following Colonel Ryan Bell'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 severely out of scope. Ensure your phone or device is on mute when you are not communicating. We allotted one hour this morning, so we are scheduled to end at about 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time.
Any questions? If not, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Colonel Ryan Bell for his opening statement. Sir?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Hey, I appreciate it. Everyone, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Colonel Ryan Bell. I'm the current commander for the 3rd Mobile Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, known as the Rakkasans. Up front, I'd like to tell you this is my first time doing this, so please forgive me. I appreciate your flexibility and the opportunity to talk to you today. I was in DC doing a keynote yesterday at the Next-Gen Drone Conference about what we learned at JRTC in April, and what we feel at the brigade level we need from American industry to fight this next conflict.
I was fortunate to spend a year before command at Duke researching lethal autonomous systems and AI. This has been an amazing time to lead in the Army as we're working through continuous transformation. This morning, I want to give you my perspective on what's changing inside the formation, take your questions, and we can go wherever you are interested.
Up front, just for background, the 101st Airborne Division was selected three years ago as the Army's lead experimental unit for our air assault capabilities and strategic mobility. The 3rd Mobile Brigade is the third infantry brigade in the 101st, and we're the third brigade in the division to transition and validate the Mobile Brigade Combat Team (MBCT) concept. First was Strike, then Bastogne, and now the Rakkasans have fielded these new capabilities while staying prepared and ready to deploy anywhere in the world. And that matters. Transformation isn't just happening in a lab; it's happening in the field, in our companies, and in the battalions under pressure, with the chance to go down to JRTC to fight Geronimo—really the best opposing force (OPFOR) in the world. It has been an amazing experience.
What I'd say looking over all of this is that using yesterday's weapons and our old doctrine is not going to help us win the next fight. Being able to execute continuous transformation—how we learn, how we adapt, how we scale—is absolutely vital as we prepare for what's coming.
During what we exercised at JRTC in April, I took the brigade there with over 500 drones. I took more than 225 one-way attack systems called PBAS (Purpose-Built Attritable Systems), most of which we built ourselves at the 101st. We also brought new electronic warfare systems, counter-UAS systems, and advanced optics. We've integrated AI fully into the brigade staff and our planning processes. We had a chance to exercise the new force design and adapt to the new operating environment, which I'd say is characterized by three main dynamics:
1. Transparency: There is persistent ISR. You have to assume you are seen wherever you are.
2. Contested Communications: Communications are contested at scale and at distance.
3. Contested Logistics: Our logistics are contested from the port to the foxhole, and there is no real safe area.
We came back with three key lessons after we completed this rotation:
• First, mass matters when talking about UAS. Particularly, if a company has only one or two drones, or a platoon has a single drone, it's a niche capability. But a company that is provided 20 drones a day—and when I'm talking drones, I'm talking one-way attack munitions—has an entirely new form of combat power. We need drones at scale. We need to treat them like ammunition. When we do the math, I estimate a brigade needs between 1,000 and 1,500 drones a week when we're in sustained combat operations. We tested that at JRTC all the way through combined arms live fires.
• Second, we've got to disperse to survive, but maintain the ability to mass and converge all our capabilities. Whether it's joint or combined arms, the modern battlefield punishes concentration. Geronimo is extremely good at identifying formations, so we had to disperse. We separated out into platoon, squad, and team patrols and ambushes, but maintained the ability, using technology, to mass at the time and place of our choosing. We used new waveforms for beyond-line-of-sight communications, updated camouflage, and it turned out to be very effective.
• Third, tempo is our advantage. Drones help us generate tempo by sensing, orienting, and striking faster than the enemy. AI helped us at the staff level plan and sustain it. I would tell you that in 10 days in "the box," drone sensors generated over 25,000 spot reports for my brigade to process. All of that was processed using artificial intelligence, which helped us make sense of the battlefield and respond faster than Geronimo.
The next point I want to focus on is soldier-driven innovation. I'd say that the most important story isn't what industry delivered to us necessarily, but it's the systems that the division has been able to build and iterate themselves so we could adapt as we fight. Fort Campbell has a facility called RAID (Robotics and Autonomous Integration Directorate), which is part of the Division Sustainment Brigade's Allied Trades. They have CNC capability, 3D printing, and can work with multiple materials, water, and laser jets to work with carbon fiber. We have soldiers, NCOs, and warrant officers designing and building drones in weeks, not years.
I'll highlight one of them: the Purpose-Built Attritable System, the A101, which is a small UAS that costs the division about $750 to make. The fuse, the warhead, and the airframe are all 3D printed and manufactured on-site. A 19-year-old soldier, once trained, can assemble one in a couple of hours in an afternoon.
The RAID capability at the 101st has enabled us to innovate rapidly. When we did platoon live fires in the fall, we realized we had drones, but we were still sending soldiers up to breach obstacles with a manual grappling hook. Three weeks later, RAID had designed and built a grappling hook attachment for the A101 so we could use a drone to drop a grappling hook at a distance instead of putting a soldier in the line of fire. As we prepared for our combined arms live fires in January, they built us a 3D-printed munition that could use the A101 to breach triple-strand concertina wire. Working with MIT Lincoln Labs, we added terminal guidance to the drones because as we were flying and doing live fires with the PBAS at Campbell, if it flew behind a tree line, we would lose communication. We needed a way for it to lock onto a target and still be able to operate in a contested environment when line-of-sight to the operator was lost. We also added "mothership" capabilities to our MRRs, so we can extend the range and drop the A101s off C-100s and other drones.
I would tell you that's what soldier-driven innovation is. It is how the Army ensures soldiers get an unfair advantage on the battlefield. We can iterate capabilities as we learn how to fight in the new operating environment, gain experience with the new force design, and then we share those lessons with the Army and industry so they can help us scale and prepare. A good example we could talk about later is how we had a fully robotic breach of a trench during one of our live fires at the end of the rotation.
The final thing I want to talk about is that the soldier remains absolutely decisive. Technology does not replace soldiers; it enables them. During the attack, one of the battalions from the brigade, "Iron" (3-187 IN), moved over 17 kilometers undetected around Geronimo—the best opposing force in the Army. They didn't do it because of drones. They did it because they were disciplined, well-trained, well-led infantry who had drones overhead helping them scout, who had electronic warfare helping them identify enemy positions, and who were able to leverage higher-level surveillance assets and AI to plan and synchronize all their resources. Ultimately, that battalion reached Shughart-Gordon behind Geronimo, and that was when Geronimo 6 realized they were there, as they started clearing the objective in his rear.
So, I'd say the rifle squad is and will remain the foundation of our close combat force. Technology enables, but discipline is what allows us to execute when that order of contact matters. I'll leave that up to your questions, and we can take this conversation wherever you want to go—whether it's AI, drones, training, task organization, or capabilities.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Thank you, Sir. I'll go ahead and start out with the first question from Defense and Aerospace Report, Vago Muradian. Do you have a question? Vago from Defense and Aerospace Report.
Vago Muradian (Defense and Aerospace Report): Thanks very much, and again, appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys. As you guys are going through this process, what are you learning about the right approach? Because at the end of the day, all of these efforts are about accelerating cycle time and gaining that advantage. We like the idea of being able to fight in the time and place of our choosing, but the adversary always gets a vote in that. We also understand that the nature of advantage is fleeting and this technology is democratized. So, what are you learning about adaptation cycles, how quickly you identify a problem, test it, and then manage to field it? What is the kind of approach you guys bring to this? If you look at it from a Ukrainian standpoint, obviously that's a much more essential kind of situation. But what are you learning about the nature of change, how to harness it, and how to improve each time you go through one of these cycles?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Hey Vago, that is a great question. I'd give a couple of points to start. The first one is that the fundamentals are absolutely decisive and matter. When I first took command, I remember observing a squad live fire. It was a night iteration, and this was a little over a year ago as we were starting before we began our training cycle. I watched this squad leader call on his radio to a team leader who was only about 10 meters away, and I realized how dependent we had become on technology—to the point that we had lost sight of some of the fundamentals.
So, we instituted a process for our live-fire training in which every time a team, squad, platoon, or company executed their live fire, the first iterations were done without digital systems—without the ATAK (Android Tactical Assault Kit) and without the ITN (Integrated Tactical Network). What it forced us to do was really get back into the SOPs and the fundamentals of how we fight as infantry so we weren't dependent on them. Then, when we added the technology back in, it allowed us to speed up. It enabled the rifleman; it didn't replace the rifleman. That culture, grounded in the fundamentals of close combat, is absolutely key. That's the first one.
The second one is that as you change and adapt to how the operating environment is shifting, it pushes the authority and the ability to innovate farther and farther down to the person who is closest to the problem. The rifleman who has to go into the breach is the one who is most incentivized to find a way to do it intelligently with new tech. That was the benefit of having RAID—having the capability there to take those ideas from our squad leaders, our lieutenants, and our captains, and rapidly iterate to see what works. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, you can put it away and try again. All of that, grounded in basic fundamentals, is the core.
Vago Muradian (Defense and Aerospace Report): May I ask a follow-up to that briefly?
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: No, absolutely. Please, you have a follow-up.
Vago Muradian (Defense and Aerospace Report): So, the flip side of that is when you talk to troops on the front edge, immediate shortfalls become a big deal. But the concern is that more often than not, we field boutique capabilities. I remember some great capabilities being fielded by the Army to folks in Iraq and Afghanistan. In one case, a friend of mine was a company commander, and they basically grabbed whatever immediate gear was available because it was better than what they had, even if it wasn't fully integrated.
How do you guard and shape this in a way that the aperture is a little bit bigger, so it doesn't end up just solving the most immediate problem in front of your nose, but actually stretches out to what you're going to need in a couple of years? If everybody is doing their own thing, you lose the benefit of integration, mass, and scale. It becomes boutique, and then it starts to become an unsustainable jumble. How does that element play into the entire equation?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: That is indeed one of the challenges as a mobile brigade: how do you scale anything you do across an Army that, if you look at the whole force, is over a million people? That was the benefit of the A101. They created a modular platform, so you could adapt it as needed with low cost. For example, we developed a 3D-printed drone capability to put a dropper for hand grenades on the drone. DEVCOM put this out, and it can be 3D printed where needed and attached to the platform. The open architecture is extremely helpful. But what I would say is all these things—the ability to scale it at a cost the Army can afford—is what's important. I don't need a boutique solution for an individual problem; we need something that scales, that industry can support, and that can be sustained in combat.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Thank you very much, Vago. I'm gonna shoot that out to Mike Brest from the Washington Examiner.
Mike Brest (Washington Examiner): Hi, thank you for doing this. I had a quick question on the A101 drones. Last I had seen them last year, they still required an international processing chip, even though they were fully 3D printed. I'm wondering if that's still the case, and if not, any other developments that you can share about them would be great. Thank you.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: All of the components on the A101 as built now are off the "Blue UAS" list, and so they're all approved for use by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (OUSD).
Mike Brest (Washington Examiner): Great. And then if you could just sort of elaborate on where you see it being most useful, and any applications that you foresee it having for your efforts on the battlefield.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: That's a great question. One of the lessons and things we are trying to do is: how do we put steel in front of soldiers? An example that everyone here is probably familiar with is a combined arms breach. A standard tactical task for a rifle company is to breach a trench line and clear it. At the end of our rotation, we did battalion live fires, and I gave one company commander the task of conducting a robotic breach. I told him, "I want you to make this breach uncontested for your riflemen when they enter."
He came back with the requirements, and what he ended up doing was taking a medium-range reconnaissance (MRR) drone that we had modified to drop the A101. He used those drones to take out electronic warfare sensors, jammers, and key targets to initiate his attack. Then, he sent in 25 one-way attack drones—the A101s—starting by destroying the bunkers, machine gun nests, and one- and two-man fighting positions.
Following the same fundamentals of SOSRA (Suppress, Obscure, Secure, Reduce, Assault), after he suppressed the objective, he obscured it. We brought in an SRR (Short-Range Reconnaissance) drone that the RAID team had modified to carry and drop smoke canisters, obscuring the breach point. Then, he brought in two A101s with a munition that the RAID team had developed to breach the triple-strand concertina wire. Finally, he brought in two unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) with 28-pound C4 breaching charges on them to clear the landmines and the wire obstacle.
So, when the riflemen got there, the breach was uncontested. Every target had been struck, and you didn't have an engineer or a Sapper squad running out with a manual grappling hook trying to low-crawl with a Bangalore torpedo. It took us 35 drones and a little over 100 pounds of C4, but it was under the cost of three 155mm artillery barrages.
That is how I see robots being used in the future as we scale the capability. We are using them to fight in front of us—a "drone contact layer," where I'm sending robots in front of my riflemen to defeat or disrupt the enemy at depth. When my riflemen get there, the enemy is already down and they are finishing the fight, but it's an unfair fight in our favor.
When we look at other mission sets that I would ask a rifle company to do, generally, a company is designed to defeat a platoon. I need to give that company 20 of those one-way munitions (those PBAS) a day in sustained combat operations, which gets us up to that 1,000 to 1,500 for a brigade when you scale that across the entire formation.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right, Sir. Moving on to Greg Jaffe from the New York Times. Do you have a question, Sir?
Greg Jaffe (New York Times): I do. Thank you very much, and thanks for doing this. Can I ask, as you get to 1,000 to 1,500 drones a week for the brigade and produce 25,000 spot reports, how does that change the way your brigade is organized? How does it change doctrine, and how do you adapt to all of these drones producing this massive amount of information and combat power?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: One of the things the brigade did over the last year is we integrated artificial intelligence into our planning process. You are all familiar with Generative AI and the OUSD platforms. We functionally took large language models (LLMs) and we trained them on our doctrine—Army doctrine, joint doctrine, 101st doctrine—as well as our products, processes, procedures, and formats. Every one of my warfighting functions—my S1, S2, S3, and S4—built and trained their own bots.
Our S2 Bot was able to feed in all of those 25,000 reports to help us process, understand, and visualize that massive amount of information to comprehend the operating environment so we could plan effectively. We found it useful in a number of ways, but we also found some areas where we did not want to use it. For example, mission analysis with AI is extremely helpful, but we learned you cannot use AI for the commander's intent. That is my responsibility. We also didn't use AI for course of action (COA) development. Large language models don't really understand three-dimensional space, so they are not good for developing courses of action. That is where you need the expertise of a skilled staff who understands how we fight to plan the operation. However, we could use AI to "Red Team" our course of action, and we could use it to help us speed up orders production. That was how we used artificial intelligence to speed up our OODA loop, for lack of a better term, to operate faster than Geronimo.
Greg Jaffe (New York Times): Got it. I was just going to ask a quick follow-up question, too. I know you guys had used the Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company (MFRC), and that's a relatively new formation to help you see out beyond the FLOT (Forward Line of Own Troops) and leverage some of this technology. I'm curious how those worked, and whether you see other kinds of units or MOSs developing to help you leverage all this new technology.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: The MFRC was outstanding. For those of you not familiar with it, it consists of a tactical UAS (TUAS) platoon, an electronic warfare (EW) platoon, an effects platoon, and a reconnaissance platoon. The TUAS and EW platoons support the brigade with those capabilities, and I task-organized teams down to the battalions to support distributed operations as they went after my PIRs (Priority Intelligence Requirements).
The effects platoon is where we kept a few of the TOW 2B missile systems on the Humvee gun trucks. Those will eventually be replaced by loitering munitions and the Mobile Long-Range Precision Strike Missile (MLRPSM) system, which we exercised to an extent. We had an Atlas-launched effects capability during the rotation.
The recon platoon is your traditional ground-based reconnaissance and security element—your scouts. At JRTC, we exercised them in a brigade-deep role. I infiltrated the MFRC using MV-22 Ospreys from the Marine Corps, flying them directly into the box from Fort Campbell. It helped the division test, as a proof of concept, how we will use future vertical lift as it starts to get fielded to the division in the coming years. They were out 7, 10, or 15 kilometers in front of my FLOT for my rifle companies, drawing the enemy away as they came into the box, helping us prepare our defense and target at depth. They served as a handshake between me and the SOF (Special Operations Forces) elements that were in front of them—there was an AOB (Advanced Operational Base) from 5th Special Forces Group in front of us in the division deep area, and they helped bridge that gap.
To get into the capabilities, particularly the tactical UAS platoon, that's where we train all of our 15-series UAS operators. As the Army starts to field more of those operators, we have backfill slots and cross-train infantrymen to fly our small UAS and our medium-range UAS. We took integration sections from the MFRC and attached them to the battalions to support their operations. I don't see the force structure for the MFRC changing, but I do see us getting better and better at how we implement those capabilities as we get more used to operating dispersed in this new operating environment. It was a really effective tool and capability to see and sense in front. As we field launched effects and the MLRPSM, the brigade's ability to shape the deep fight out to 30 or 35 kilometers is only going to become more important.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right. Thank you, Greg. I'm gonna shoot down to Chris Panella from Business Insider. Do you have a question, Sir?
Chris Panella (Business Insider): Hey, thanks so much for doing this. I'm wondering if you can elaborate on whether there's been any feedback on drone capabilities—things that people are maybe wanting more of—and if there has been feedback, what has that feedback been like? Thank you.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: From my operators, the first feedback is: we need more of them. We have to be able to mass the capability. If it's niche, if there are just one or two, or if they are extremely expensive, they won't use them. That was what we saw with the Raven, for example. Company commanders were worried about losing it because it was extremely expensive, so they wouldn't fly it. Giving them a high volume of drones, keeping them at a relatively low cost, and keeping them simple for an operator to use is key—particularly in combat when you have a 19-year-old private who is trying to fly a drone and has been awake for 48 hours. We've got to make sure it's designed for combat utility.
The battalions and their drone sections did an amazing job of integrating their short-range reconnaissance (SRR) drones and their PBAS as "hunter-killers." They would fly the Skydio X10s in front of their formations to find Geronimo, and once they found them, they would launch their A101s and just humble the enemy at a distance. The challenge was making sure you don't run out, because there was no shortage of targets. It was making sure that we aligned the capability to the right target on our high-priority target list.
At the tactical level for small UAS, they need to be simple and relatively inexpensive—under the price of an artillery shell in terms of capabilities. Our MRRs, like the Ghost-X and the C-100 VTOL, are vital for keeping distance between us and the enemy and understanding that space for the battalions. We're really looking forward to getting LRR and TUAS systems to the brigade so we can exercise those ISR capabilities at distance.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Hi, Chris. Do you have a follow-up to that, Sir?
Chris Panella (Business Insider): Yeah, just a quick one. I'm wondering, do you find that as people become more familiar with drones—whether that's 3D printing parts or just using more of them—they're able to quickly pick up different systems? Is that exposure helping them become familiar with a variety of systems, and not just something that is simple?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Yeah, the new generation of soldiers coming in pick it up very quickly. You hand them some drones, and those who express interest, we hand them the FPV goggles, put them on a simulator, and they're flying them pretty fast. What I'm looking at, from the perspective of a combat commander, is understanding that when they're trying to operate these in combat under levels of stress we can't fully replicate in training, we need to make sure the systems are designed to accommodate that.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right, Sir. Moving right along down to Drew Lawrence from Defense Scoop. Do you have a question, Sir?
Drew Lawrence (Defense Scoop): I do. Thanks for doing this. I'm interested to learn more about your use of the Hunter WOLF. How did you use it, at what echelon was it used, and where does it need to improve?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Yeah, thank you. The Hunter WOLF was the ground UGV that we put a machine gun on. I used it primarily for the defense of one of my high-value assets, my M777 battery, to help secure it because I knew Geronimo was going to try to hunt and take out those triple-sevens. We found it really helpful. It filled gaps and allowed that battalion commander to cover dead space where he didn't have soldiers. The all-weather capability of its sensors was awesome. It allowed us to reallocate manpower away from securing the triple-sevens and do a better job of area security, and eventually go on the offense while still keeping my M777s protected. That's probably the biggest takeaway for UGVs: their ability to allow us to focus combat power and not disperse our human soldiers when we have security requirements that need to be taken care of.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: You have a follow-up, Drew?
Drew Lawrence (Defense Scoop): Got it. I do. I talked to some of the folks from Geronimo a few weeks ago, specifically about their EW and cyber capabilities that they were throwing at rotating forces. How did you fare against that? Did anything surprise you, and how did you have to adapt to it?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Knowing we were going into an operating environment that is highly contested in the communications spectrum, we did a few things. First, for our mission command nodes, we separated them. My main command post, which was predominantly focused on planning, stayed at Alexandria Airfield for the first four days before they jumped in. We got it small enough that it functionally fit on three LMTVs with a tarp. My forward command post was made up of five Humvees and a tarp. Inside both of those, we hardwired everything. We had no Wi-Fi, and we had the EW teams do signals audits to get rid of all Bluetooth signals. We focused primarily on our beyond-line-of-sight capabilities using Starshield. As a result, in the box, the electronic emission signature for my command posts was less than a rifle platoon with ITN radios.
The result was that Geronimo was never able to locate either one of my CPs during the entire rotation, and they were able to operate and plan continuously. Added to that was excellent tactical discipline: the CPs were in miserable locations buried in gulches, hidden by terrain, covered by trees and camouflage, and we jumped locations every 18 to 30 hours. That enabled us to effectively fight the brigade while remaining hidden in the spectrum.
For the battalions, companies, and below, we adopted an operating concept of "silent, violent, silent." How do you go black in the comms spectrum, maneuver silently to a position of advantage, and then, when you're there and ready to attack, come up on the communications network, leverage joint and combined arms fires, destroy the enemy, and then get off the objective and go silent again? We trained on this, going back to our platoon lanes through Operation Lethal Eagle in January and through JRTC, teaching elements to use specific communication windows and otherwise remain silent to avoid detection.
That is what enabled that 17-kilometer infiltration by Iron (3-187 IN), and it enabled Kurhe (1-506 IN) to infiltrate two companies 22 kilometers behind Geronimo, because they were able to operate off the spectrum. Part of that was training myself and the leaders to get used to not talking to the formation—knowing that I may have a company that is going to be off comms for four, five, six, or eight hours, and being okay with that. There is a significant cultural component to it.
We also took our own EW systems there. I had Kraken and TEWS-I (Tactical Electronic Warfare System - Infantry), so we were doing the same thing to Geronimo that they were doing to us—tracking them, identifying their locations, and calling for fire or sending drones anytime they transmitted. We changed how we organized and took those same capabilities to cause him some stress as well.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right. Thank you, Sir.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: May I, please, just going back to your question on drones. One of the things we focused on is how do we reduce the cognitive load on our soldiers with these systems. At JRTC, we implemented a technology—you might have heard of something similar called Pixel Lock—but essentially, it's a terminal guidance capability. When that drone operator selects the person or the target and the drone locks on, they don't have to fly the FPV all the way to impact; it is able to fly itself. That significantly reduces the training requirement for the operator.
The other thing we've been working on—it did not work at JRTC, but we have since executed it at an operation in Montana in May called Battlelab—is "one-to-many" swarm control. We've successfully done one-to-five control, which allows a single operator to control five drones. That will be how we scale this capability. I hope that helps.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right, Sir. Hope Seck for Military Times. Do you have a question?
Hope Seck (Military Times): I do. Thank you so much. I was hoping to go back to the proof of concept with the insertion of the MFRC via the MV-22. Could you get a little bit more granular about what that involved, and also if there are any kind of action items or concrete lessons learned about working with that platform that you're taking forward?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Great question. The future vertical lift platforms coming in the future are going to be game-changers, particularly for the 101st, because they extend our operational reach out beyond 500 miles. You could functionally deploy a battalion or the brigade from Fort Campbell to Europe with the capabilities that platform brings.
The challenge for us was: how do we synchronize the flight of that aircraft at distance with our Chinooks, our Blackhawks, and our ground infiltration so we mass in the box at the same time? We brought elements in from 500 kilometers away using MV-22s—59 aircraft total for the Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) operating off Alexandria Airfield, executing 14 simultaneous landing zone insertions across the box so we could seize the key terrain we wanted. This included one company fast-roping into Smithville so they could secure the area a couple of hours after the initial infiltration. The bigger challenge wasn't the MFRC on the MV-22; it was the staff understanding the capabilities of the platform and us learning how to plan and integrate that type of large-scale, long-range air assault.
Hope Seck (Military Times): That's helpful. Just on the action points, what is the next step in integration for these future vertical lift capabilities as they come on board?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: As they come online in the next few fiscal years, leading up to that, it's about getting more experience with tilt-rotor platforms and adapting our TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) to the speed and capacity they bring to the fight. They can go places and ranges that we can't necessarily reach with Blackhawks, and that is going to change how we disperse and how we organize at the beginning of the fight.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Thank you, Hope. Moving down to Meredith with Janes. Do you have a question, ma'am?
Meredith Roaten (Janes): Hi, thanks for doing this. I wanted to ask about the modifications that you made to the MRR and SRR platforms. Can you talk about the process of those? Was it something that your soldiers were able to modify, or did you have to ask the vendors to do that work? Thanks.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Thanks, Meredith. It was a combination of both. At JRTC, we used the Skydio MRR as a mothership, and that was done in concert with the vendor to let us test the capability. The C-100 was done the same way, but primarily through our RAID team in concert with the vendor. The benefit of having RAID, though, is we have been able to modify the equipment they build there relatively quickly to test out capabilities as we identify gaps that can be filled by robotics. It's a great opportunity to showcase the partnership with industry that the 101st brings—specifically through RAID and the brigade—where we can iterate rapidly with industry, advance the capabilities, and bring them faster down to the tactical line.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Do you have a follow-up, ma'am?
Meredith Roaten (Janes): Yeah, I just want to ask: for these modifications, is that something that you're going to use again, or are you going to use those modifications on other unmanned platforms? What is the next step for that experimentation effort?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Yes. We fed that feedback up to the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCOE) and to the Combined Arms Center (CAC) on the lessons learned from our rotation. Speaking of the mothership capability, it enables us to mass precision with those one-way attack munitions and allows us to extend their range and capabilities. The request is to help us expand that. If I am flying an MRR or an LRR and I can see a target, I should have the ability to strike it. We filled that feedback up, and we're seeing the Army move in those directions and take that feedback. There is experimentation across the force now, particularly up at DEVCOM, building those capabilities out.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Thank you, Meredith. Moving on to Lauren Williams from Defense One. You have a question, ma'am?
Lauren C. Williams (Defense One): Yes. Thanks so much for doing this. This is probably more drone and unmanned systems-related, but I'm curious what energy and power generation challenges you all experienced and how you mitigated them. More broadly, what are you asking from industry besides, obviously, the ability to produce in large numbers? What technologies or capabilities are you asking industry to come up with to help you fill the gaps you've observed so far?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Great question. As we field more technology, power generation becomes increasingly problematic. The ITN and all the soldier-borne equipment require batteries that have to be recharged. ENVGs (Enhanced Night Vision Goggles) require batteries, particularly when you use thermals. As we add drones, the SRRs and MRRs all have to be charged.
The way we approached that—and it was the benefit of being a mobile brigade with the Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV)—is we were able to put power inverters on all of our ISVs. Every squad functionally had their own generator without having to tow a trailer or a generator behind them, and they were able to recharge their batteries and systems in the field.
Where I see gaps as we add more drones and technology:
1. Higher-capacity batteries: We need batteries with higher energy density so we can reduce the number of batteries soldiers have to charge and carry, because soldier load is a very real constraint.
2. Smaller hybrid generators: Ideally, we need small hybrid generators that I could mount on an ISV-U (the utility variant of the ISV). Based on the terrain and the way we use the ISVs, the fewer trailers we have, the better. Small hybrid generators that enable us to control our thermal and acoustic signature while generating power at scale—1, 2, 5, or 10 kilowatts depending on the size of the CP or the element—would be hugely helpful, and I know the Army is working on that right now.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: You have a follow-up, Lauren?
Lauren C. Williams (Defense One): Nope, that was it. Thank you.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Absolutely. Daniel Schere from Inside Defense. Do you have a question, Sir?
Daniel Schere (Inside Defense): Yes, thank you so much for doing this. Maybe if you could just provide a few more details about the 3D-printed drones from RAID. How many of them were used in this rotation, what was the overall feedback on their performance, and what is the timeline in terms of getting to that scale you were talking about of 1,000 to 1,500 a week? What are we looking at there?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: The A101 is manufactured right there on Fort Campbell. It takes a soldier a couple of hours to build; you could build about two a day if you focus on it. The longest piece of the process is the soldering and working the microchips.
The division itself doesn't have the ability to scale production to those numbers. That is where we absolutely need industry to produce these at scale, especially when you start thinking about the numbers the Army would require. I won't speak for the Army, but if our experience of needing 1,000 a week is scaled out across the force, you can do the math. We're trying to iterate and identify what capabilities are required for us to fight so that industry can help us solve those production problems.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Do you have a follow-up, Sir?
Daniel Schere (Inside Defense): Yeah, just to go off of that. What are you hearing from industry as far as their ability to help scale it, and what feedback did you receive from them?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: We had a good conversation yesterday at the Next-Gen Drone Conference. The feedback was that we are looking for a "good enough" drone, not a perfect drone—something simple and robust so operators can use it easily in the field. The scale we discussed was helpful for them to conceptualize what they need to build in terms of capacity. It wasn't about having a $5,000 drone where we put only one in a platoon, treating it like a Carl Gustaf or an AT4, which doesn't fundamentally change how we fight. But when we started talking about using 20 of these to attack a platoon position or 30 of these to breach a trench line, it helped them understand the manufacturing capacity they have to build. That was where most of the dialogue was focused.
Daniel Schere (Inside Defense): Got it. Just one more quick one: how many of the drones used in the rotation were those 3D-printed ones?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: We had 228 one-way attack munitions, and roughly 150 of those were produced by the 101st.
Daniel Schere (Inside Defense): Got it. Thanks.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right. Mark Pomerleau from Breaking Media. Do you have a question, Sir?
Mark Pomerleau (Breaking Media): Yes, thank you. I'd just be curious to hear a little bit about how you guys used the TEWS-I. How did that differ from some of the other EW capabilities that you've used in the past? Thank you.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: The TEWS-I (Tactical Electronic Warfare System - Infantry) is an EW system that we mounted on our Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV). It gave us a mobile EW system with an expanded range compared to the dismounted VMAX and Kraken systems we have in the MFRC. The mobility allowed me to adjust it rapidly on the battlefield, shifting it from battalion to battalion based on where our intelligence assessed the enemy was going to attack, and its range helped us detect them at a much greater distance.
Without getting into classified specifics, it was absolutely vital when we were on the defense to identify where they were going to try to breach, and for identifying the locations where the enemy was dropping off their robotics because of the electronic signature they produced. For us, it was one of the first times we were able to use an EW system at that scale, and we saw the immense importance of that capability. Particularly in all-weather conditions, it became one of our most reliable sensors for understanding the battlefield. I am fully supportive of keeping and getting more of those types of capabilities integrated into our formations.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: You have a follow-up, Sir?
Mark Pomerleau (Breaking Media): Yes, just quickly. So, you found it a little bit more useful and effective than your dismounted systems, is that essentially what you're saying?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: It's a different capability. The dismounted systems, because of the places they can go, are extremely helpful. But the fact that TEWS-I was vehicle-mounted gave me a rapid mobility option. It was more flexible for me at the brigade level, allowing me to relocate it based on where I accepted risk and what the enemy was showing me. When you put a dismounted system out, it is somewhat static and dependent on your ability to predict where the enemy is going ahead of time. A mounted capability gives us the flexibility to shift as the battlefield changes. You need both.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right. Corey Dickstein from Stars and Stripes. Do you have a question, Sir?
Corey Dickstein (Stars and Stripes): I do. Yeah, thanks, Colonel, for doing this. You talked a little bit earlier about some of the AI stuff you guys were doing, but I wonder if you could give some examples of how you or your commanders were using AI assets in your decision-making process during the rotation, or how soldiers on the line are using it.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Awesome. Yeah, we focused on a couple of areas. We integrated something called Strike-AI from the AI Task Force on our MRRs, which helped us with automated target recognition as they were conducting their ISR flights. That was then leveraged in the digital kill chain to call for fire from mortars or to send our one-way attack munitions.
The battalions have all invested heavily in their digital call-for-fire systems and sensor-to-shooter links. They were able to, in some cases, complete the kill chain in under a minute from the time they identified a target to the time a round was leaving the tube. We need to continue to practice and train to make that happen every single time, but AI in that case was hugely helpful, and I know they're still building that capability and working to push it out across the Army.
In the brigade staff is where we focused most of our large language models and planning capability, and that is where it sped us up. We would receive the OPORD (Operations Order) from division, and by using AI, we could push a brigade warning order (WARNORD) out in under half an hour. We used it to support mission analysis and orders development, which allowed us to spend more time on wargaming. On average, the staff spent a little over four hours wargaming, so they could war-game multiple branches and sequels and have those plans fully synchronized.
In orders production, it sped up the mechanical processes to get those orders out to the battalions. On the defense, for example, normally at JRTC, you will see the brigade order published right about the time Geronimo pushes out his reconnaissance and the defense starts, leaving the battalions struggling to get their own planning done and establish their defensive positions. Ours was done 72 hours ahead of time. It enabled the battalions to fully work through their planning cycle using the one-third, two-thirds rule, put in 100% of their planned obstacles, refine, rehearse, and then put in additional obstacles to build a defense that held—despite Geronimo launching three chemical attacks and using their robots to attempt to breach. That is where it saved us time. It bought time for the battalions and companies to rehearse, and enabled us to control the tempo of the fight.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Do you have a follow-up, Sir?
Corey Dickstein (Stars and Stripes): Yeah. I wonder, Colonel, how you think about managing risk given this transitional period while you are experimenting and incorporating all this new tech, prepping for future vertical lift, and so on, while still maintaining a brigade that needs to be combat-capable if something popped off tomorrow. How do you think about all of that?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: That's a perfect question. We are on the Crisis Response Force mission right now, so my brigade is on alert. We will assume the Immediate Response Force (IRF) mission this fall, so we maintain a high level of readiness to deploy anywhere our nation calls.
Managing that risk goes back to what I said at the very beginning: the focus of our training has got to remain on the fundamentals of warfighting. We must have excellent light infantry led by competent, trained noncommissioned officers and lieutenants who can make decisions at the point of contact. The technology has to enable them; it cannot encumber them, and it cannot replace tactical skill. They still have to be able to fight without it.
So, we focused our training on those basics. We concentrated the innovation and new technology in specific places. I didn't ask the individual rifleman to go out and innovate; I asked him to be a really good rifleman. We put the AI on the staffs where we could manage it, and we put the new technology in the multi-functional companies (MFRCs) who are trained on how to use it to enable the rifle companies. That's how I looked at mitigating the risk of adaptation and innovation while still remaining a combat-credible force that is ready to fight tonight.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right. Thank you very much. Next, Matt Beinart from Access Intel. Do you have a question, Sir?
Matthew Beinart (Access Intel): Hi, I do. Thank you. We've heard a lot about the ISV playing a key role within the MBCT. In terms of what you've observed, what are the latest ways you've found to use those platforms? How are you pushing the edge of what that capability can provide, and how is that informing future requirements for the ISV? I appreciate any insight on that. Thank you.
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: I appreciate it. I was fortunate to command a mobile airborne battalion prior to the ISV selection, so I had a battalion made up of GMVs and DAGORs. I've been working on this mobile infantry concept for six years now. The ISV is an amazing truck. It is a great way to get to work.
What it allows us to do, first, is it gives us the mobility to move faster, react to problems, and reallocate forces much faster on the battlefield than a traditional Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) could. Second, it gives my squads and companies a level of sustainment we didn't have before. We went into the box with three days of sustainment on each vehicle—a full load of fuel, water, and ammunition, and we added sustainment racks on the back of the vehicles to carry even more ammo. The result was that nobody at JRTC ran out of water, and at no point did I have a platoon run out of fuel or ammunition, because every vehicle was a mobile sustainment platform. It distributed our sustainment and allowed us to push logistics further forward.
The other thing it does is help manage the physical endurance of my riflemen by taking the combat load off their backs. The rifleman is able to leave his rucksack on the truck and take only his assault pack. They are still light infantry—they are maneuvering, patrolling, moving through the woods and swamps, and getting into fights—but the ISV with their sustainment is kept back in a protected terrain feature and bounds forward as they advance. We were able to move faster because the physical load on my infantry was significantly less, but we didn't have the risk of having our sustainment miles back in the rear because it was right there with them.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Do you have a follow-up?
Matthew Beinart (Access Intel): Yeah, building on the benefits you've seen from the platform, and knowing that the JRTC experience is about informing future development priorities, is there anything you'd like to see in terms of a new variant of the ISV, or the ability to further modify the platform? Is there anything you can take from your experience that you would feed back into future developments?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Yeah, the feedback we provided was focused on some of the areas we've already talked about. One is power generation. That is a challenge, and as future ISVs are fielded, we need to ensure they are utilized as power generation platforms, particularly for our squads. Our use of the vehicle as a sustainment platform by adding commercial off-the-shelf racks on the back was very helpful. We are also excited to get the ISV-U, which will give us more utility lift capacity. Having a single, common platform across the formation will simplify our logistics chain. The utility variant will be extremely helpful for mission command and power generation for our command posts.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right, thank you all. I have one last question. Evan Lynch from Signal Magazine. Do you have a question, Sir?
Evan Lynch (Signal Magazine): Yes, I do. Thank you so much, Colonel Bell, for doing this. I wanted to talk more about the payloads related to these drones. Can you go through what types of payloads these drones can carry and what missions they are able to execute?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: Yes. On our PBAS, they've designed them with a modular Picatinny rail system. The payloads we've developed and exercised so far include:
• A basic high-explosive munition using C4.
• A DEVCOM-developed explosively formed penetrator (EFP) that we can use against light armor and personnel.
• A 3D-printed fragmentation round manufactured at the RAID site.
• A grappling hook modification to allow us to clear obstacles.
• A bridging munition designed to clear triple-strand concertina wire.
• The ability to drop smoke canisters or hand grenades, which we modified both the Skydio X10 and the PBAS to carry.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: Do you have a follow-up, Evan?
Evan Lynch (Signal Magazine): No, Sir. That's it. Thank you so much.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right, everyone, we're just about out of time, but I do want to offer Colonel Bell an opportunity to provide a closing comment. Do you have a closing comment, Sir?
Colonel Richard Ryan Bell: I appreciate it. Just a couple of notes in closing. First, the Army is modernizing in real time, and the soldiers of the 101st are ready for the next fight. My brigade is ready to go wherever we are called. I really appreciate your help in letting the nation know what we're doing and helping us communicate that.
To close, I'll emphasize three points on what we need at the tactical level—for platoons, companies, battalions, and brigades:
1. Drones in mass: We need them simple enough for an 18-year-old private to fly after being awake for 48 hours in active contact.
2. Cost-effective: They must be cheap enough that commanders will actually use them in the quantities the fight requires. We must treat them like ammunition, not like helicopters. That is the demand signal from a commander's perspective.
3. Technology enables, but does not replace, human skill: Technology does not replace the fundamentals of warfighting. Drones do not seize terrain, and AI does not make decisions—warfighters do. The rifle squad is and will remain the foundation of how the Army fights in close combat. Technology gives us an unfair advantage, but the discipline and skill of the individual soldier is what wins the fight.
For the 101st, we have been at the forefront of vertical envelopment for the last 84 years. We are getting ready to enter the fourth generation of it—starting with parachutes and gliders, moving to air mobility in Vietnam, air assault in Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and now as we field future vertical lift, integrate drones, and leverage AI. As we get ready for this next operating environment that is transforming in front of us, we are ready for the call. I appreciate your time.
Lt. Col. Vonnie Wright: All right. Thank you very much, everyone. If I didn't get to you, or if you have any follow-up queries, please reach out to me, Lieutenant Colonel Vonnie Wright, here at Army Public Affairs. I will follow up on your questions and get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you so much, and I will provide you with a transcript. Have a good day, everyone.
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