NUREMBERG, Germany (AP) — A lone American soldier stood on a dusty road in Germany, fussing with a controller. Moments later, a drone, with wings that stretched almost as wide as his arms, whirred to life and shot into the sky.
The soldier was taking part in a U.S. Army training exercise designed to showcase and experiment with tactics and equipment picked up from the Ukrainians, whose pioneering drone warfare has helped them against Russia's forces
more than 4 1/2 years into the war.
The annual American exercises, held in the Bavarian foothills over the past several weeks, demonstrate how close the relationship has become between U.S. and Ukrainian forces as American troops look to incorporate drone capabilities and tactics into their own units.
Brig. Gen. Terry Tillis, who leads the Germany-based Army training unit, recently told reporters that they have 1,900 drones and they represent “the latest things that we’ve learned from Ukrainian efforts in this war.”
The Associated Press received rare access to the training ground in Germany and troops conducting the exercises, gaining insight into how the United States is pairing with and learning from Ukraine. The effort has taken on more urgency as the U.S. tries to counter Iranian drone attacks in that more than 6-month-old conflict.
The U.S. military has become more comfortable highlighting the level of cooperation it receives from Ukrainian forces, and officials say the Army has made strides in getting drones into soldiers' hands. But leaders have not offered a clear answer to how America's largest military service will adapt its tactics to any conflict where drones are omnipresent.
An Army official said that while there is universal agreement on the need to incorporate drones into the ranks, Army leaders still need to decide how to structure those ground forces for drone warfare and not just use drones to aid in tasks that soldiers already do.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Army units are integrating one-way attack drones all the way down to the company level, but there needs to be more than just “adding drones to an infantry battalion.”
Aiding such efforts are large annual exercises such as Saber Junction, which runs for nearly four weeks in August and September in Germany. The Army unit heading up the U.S. forces is the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
Tillis, the brigadier general, said some soldiers from the brigade were sent to Ukraine at the start of the year to learn from the country that has been on the cutting edge of drone warfare since Russia invaded in February 2022.
During the Army exercises, Tillis said late last month that the Ukrainians “are embedded with them, they’ll help advise, assist and then help them employ” the technology.
About a dozen Ukrainian military personnel traveled to Germany to participate in this year's exercise. They are providing insights on electronic warfare, drone warfare and lessons learned from ongoing combat operations, the U.S. Army said.
Roughly 50% of the 173rd Airborne Brigade's engagements with opposing troops during the exercise “were drone contact first,” Anthony Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer, told reporters this week.
Even as that collaboration yields more insights, it comes as the Army has faced a parade of departures of top leaders who have championed these drone experiments.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suddenly ousted the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen. Randy George, in April and replaced him with Gen. Christopher LaNeve. LaNeve has had an ascendant career under the Republican administration, going from commanding an Army formation in South Korea to effectively leading the nation's largest military service as acting chief of staff in about two years.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, the service’s top civilian leader and a George ally, also departed early this month. Both George and Driscoll were champions of quickly adapting the Army to use drone technology.
Trump has named Adam Telle, a civilian leader in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as the acting Army secretary.
A couple of weeks before Driscoll's departure, LaNeve ordered an Army unit experimenting in drone warfare — a smaller formation within the 173rd Airborne Brigade — to end its efforts and return to being a traditional infantry battalion after nearly a year of work.
The Army has argued that returning the unit to a more traditional mission was always part of the plan, but there was an expectation under the previous leadership that the battalion would continue its work.
While the loss of the specialized unit appears to be a blow to drone warfare efforts, the Army official noted that it was never clear whether such units were going to be the path forward in the long term.
The official said both the specialized battalion and the regular engagements with the Ukrainians are not part of a larger effort to mimic Ukraine but to help the Army imagine how the U.S. would employ its own formation built around the way the American military wages war.
With more resources, the Ukrainians also would be using drones in a different way, the official said.
Ukraine two years ago created a separate branch of the armed forces, called the Unmanned Systems Forces, just for drone warfare. But drones also have become so deeply embedded across Ukraine’s military that it is hard to find a unit that does not use them in some form — from reconnaissance to strikes — with artillery and other traditional weapons now often operating in tandem with drones overhead.
Similarly, the Army’s chief technology officer said he has discouraged the idea of centralizing drone knowledge in one unit or formation.
“We’ve pushed back on having something like a drone corps since its inception because our theory of the case is if you centralize that in one place, what you lose is the ability to actually scale that learning and send that out to the rest of the Army,” Miller told reporters Wednesday.
Miller also pointed to the 173rd Airborne Brigade's performance in the exercises in Germany as proof that spreading drone integration efforts “across the brigade and across the Army was the right move.”
