- 5 months ago
Go inside a US Army combat training exercise in Germany, where drone pilots are being trained 400 miles from the Ukraine border.
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00:00these drones built by the army soldiers flying them only cost about $500 a piece and the army
00:09is betting that they could be the difference on the battlefield these soldiers training on
00:14a base in southern Germany are about 400 miles away from the Ukraine border these
00:25army soldiers dressed in all black or pretending to be the enemy in training they're known as off
00:34or opposing force being attacked by army soldiers in the 2nd Cavalry Regiment or 2CR to see our soldiers
00:49use a drone to fly over and around a trench held by the Op4 this distraction gives the assault team
01:03a window to breach the Op4's defense and successfully seize the trench I honestly think that that drone
01:14was there just to harass us and annoy us the way that thing is just flying around I hell if I could
01:19beat that guy I won't shake his head until he's a good damn pilot we were just harassing and
01:25distracting the Op4 in the trench it's very loud it's very fast you can't really counter it you
01:31can't shoot it down you're not going to be able to hit it you're not going to be able to shoot it down
01:36the army said it will spend 36 billion dollars modernizing the force over the next five years
01:45with a heavy emphasis on drones business insider went inside a combat training exercise with soldiers
01:54who build and fly drones to find out what's working and what needs work
02:04what you see here is the Bavarian countryside in southern Germany tucked away in these hills is a 63
02:20square mile training facility called the Hohenfels training area it's where the US Army's 2nd Cavalry
02:27regiment is conducting a training exercise known as sticks lanes sticks stands for situational training
02:36exercise these soldiers are going to go in platoon by platoon with a simple mission get eyes on an
02:44objective which is a series of trenches seize it and clear it during this training exercise I spent a
02:54lot of time with army drone pilots these soldiers develop drones that they built in the drone
03:00innovation cell at grafenware training area and then they come down here to Hohenfels training area to
03:05deploy that technology in a combat training environment I'm here at the drone innovation cell here in
03:21Germany where the soldiers are learning to not only fly drones but they're also learning to build them
03:27all of them were completely designed built and flown by two CR soldiers UAS unmanned aerial systems
03:36historically particularly within the US military it's been treated almost exclusively as an ISR platform so
03:42intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance it's changed drastically I'd say in the last couple of
03:48years due to some obvious influence from the ongoing war in Ukraine with us observing the Russo-Ukrainian
03:54war we're seeing the significant impact that drones are undeniably having the US military is seeing that and
03:59figuring out where we can integrate that into our formations to increase our overall lethality this
04:06drone is a seven inch fully 3d printed drone and it can be used to carry any type of payload that you wish one
04:16example I just have this little dummy you know dummy ammunition here it would slide in to this
04:21portion and that's how it would lock in and then when the operator or pilot is flying this they would
04:27just need to press you know a safety and then a release and then it would cause the ammunition to fall
04:32from the drone these drones according to the army cost about five hundred dollars a piece that's very
04:41very inexpensive compared to a lot of the high-end drones that are out there the price point remains
04:46incredibly low so we're designing 3d printing our frames and then assembling the drones using existing
04:52components I would say about ninety nine point eight percent of all of the drone equipment that exists in the
04:58world comes from one country and that's a country that we cannot we should not buy components from
05:04these components though come from Europe they use these headsets and these headsets allow the pilots
05:14to see what the drone sees as it's in flight very light it's not like a virtual reality headset or a
05:20meta quest or anything like that lighter than ski goggles I would say is this difficult it's more
05:32difficult than a regular drone you have to like you you control everything that this drone does it's
05:36not doesn't like self stabilize at all with piloting you know who gets to be a part of it I personally
05:42would say anyone that has the extreme interest in it so there is a certain level of it that requires
05:47some hard skills having soldiers that have been trained by the army already to do things like
05:52soldering and do things like wiring definitely helps and those people have been given priorities
05:57it to learn how to do that do soldiers who have an acumen for gaming are they particularly attractive
06:04a hundred percent when the unmanned systems force of Ukraine was created one of their initial slogans
06:08was for those who were born with a joystick in their hand and I have seen that 100 play out to be the case
06:13the top pilots of people who are learning the fastest able to fly the most controlled fly the fastest
06:20those are the soldiers who when they get off on Fridays they go and play you know video games when
06:272CR goes out to the field in a few days they will be using this exact equipment with these exact drones
06:322CR is getting ready to start their convoy to the Hohenfels training area where the big training
06:44exercise is going to happen I got to see the drone packed up in a sort of makeshift ruck to carry the
06:51drones we'll kind of see and then just kind of feedback and then adjust it based on how it works
06:56see you know initially what I'm concerned about is all this is going to get you know you're going to
07:01get in the wood line and it's going to get hung up on stuff I was thinking about taking off the props
07:07how to get there and then just waiting for the lift up and then I'll put it down
07:10the two CR soldiers travel in a convoy of striker armored combat vehicles
07:25after a 40-mile ride down the German Autobahn they reach Hohenfels training area a place the soldiers
07:33affectionately refer to as the box we're heading to the box I'm riding in a Humvee now to link up with
07:42the soldiers that traveled in the strikers 300 for each to goon and then 800 for each gun all right so we're
07:56about to leave this area and head into the box and I'm actually going to ride in the striker with
08:02the soldiers how's it going all right where should I sit make yourself comfortable every show all right
08:10we've got four drones here in the striker vehicle strikers moving it's just uh me and two drone
08:17pilots back here this is basically the drone mobile how'd you end up being a drone pilot uh
08:22voluntold voluntold actually yeah it's uh ended up going to a class uh it's a two to three week course
08:32we're driving along with the striker now it's um it's going at a pretty fast clip it definitely like
08:37smells like fuel in here
08:39we got off the striker the soldiers dismounted quickly
09:00on a clock 200 meters now let's go let's go receiving indirect fire
09:05base it out run let's go
09:10oh the drone pilot got caught in a really thick sharp vine and he didn't have any help
09:19to get him out and he essentially just had to yank himself out of there
09:27the soldiers moved up a hill
09:29one four golf this is one six
09:31the lieutenant asked the drone pilot to get the drone up in the air to do some recon
09:38so he started to try to get the drone ready to go all the different components the drone
09:42the headset the controller but then he struggled when he couldn't get a video link from the drone's
09:51camera to the headset i believe one of the cords um on the vtech server staffs okay it's uh wire has
09:58been freed okay it compromises the video as soon as it gets back to as soon as you're back to the
10:04eyes we chuck it over to dakota
10:08he thought that getting snagged in that vine is is what did the damage to that that cable that
10:14provides the video feed wasn't even paying attention to the tree kind of got tunnel vision and wanted to
10:19just follow the dude in front of me and ended up getting caught we're still so new to having drones
10:23with us kind of just grabbed a bag and threw it on there and hoping it worked and i think that it
10:28being it's so exposed itself uh it was actually one of the problems six we're going to conduct our
10:34leaders recon from orp at this location break so when they couldn't get the drone up in the air
10:40they they did a leaders recon where they got a different look but just not not a drone's eye view
10:45we have to work through some problems in the field because we're innovating at a speed that we kind
10:51of haven't seen before in the past i think it's a really you know great thing that we're doing
10:55right now and it's a good problem to have the total investment for this project is 290 000
11:02dollars that covers 160 drones as well as the controllers and the headsets
11:08along with the drones assembled by the soldiers 2cr also uses drones made by the california-based company
11:19skydio part of a 100 million dollar contract the army awarded the company in 2022 trying to locate
11:29objectivator i've lost gps so i don't have access to maps all right don't worry about objectivator our
11:35primary focus is to worry about the ops over directly to our east we were just doing air
11:41reconnaissance trying to scout and see if we can find any of their fortifications if they have any
11:46or any sort of obstacles that they may have constructed i couldn't quite reach the objective
11:52from the point we're at so we're going to try to push further up the hill to get better a lot of
11:56sight on the objective itself so now we're on top of a mountain called old baldy here on the hohenfels
12:13training area and we've been with a drone pilot that's been doing some surveillance and reconnaissance
12:19trying to find the objective that the platoon is trying to seize i need to know the grid of that
12:24location immediately okay we've lost access to coin grid i've lost gps we'll just i need to be able
12:30to see it you need to find me i'm gonna be right up here okay first one wasn't able to reach the
12:37objective because it lost link we're hoping that the second one is able to with a better line of sight
12:41from where we're currently situated now another drone pilot has linked up up here on old baldy and he
12:49is going to be using one of the fpv drones that's first person view where he wears the headset so
12:55that he can see what the drone sees
13:07on his first attempt he had a bad connection getting to that location was difficult because there is a
13:14massive ridge line in between here and there that ridge line blocks the video transmission between
13:20the drone and my goggles so i lost control of it i tried to gain altitude to regain that video link but
13:28even gaining as much altitude as it could let me would not we regain that link so we had to get
13:36another drone hit a few with them so we got one of his backups i got really clear well for a second
13:46clear signal a few of the lessons learned we need an extended coaxial cable to extend the range so are
13:52you finding the range is not as long as you wish absolutely it's not nearly as long as i need i can
13:59keep it where it's at and show you the video i need an external monitor for leadership to observe what
14:05i'm seeing so they can direct me and they can see what i'm seeing and where i'm located at i don't
14:12have any more screws for the propellers so either way we can't fly anymore we're learning a ton of
14:16things right now right okay so that's all valuable lessons learned and like you know first aren't
14:20please dig the or you know write these down uh so we can pass this up to our folks across the regiment
14:29even though they got both drones up both dealt with different issues connectivity issues camera issues
14:35what was cool was that the drone team would like take a piece from one drone put it on the other
14:41sort of frankenstein the drones just to make them work and they did they got the opportunity to get
14:47eyes on the objective and relay that information to their leadership and continue with their mission
14:56the global war on terror
14:58we had uncontested air dominance because anything that flew was u.s government stuff now that's not
15:05the case i'm having to train soldiers to react to uas then they may not know if it is a friendly a
15:11foe or a neutral uas it's a markedly different environment and it makes it challenging we understand
15:16that that is going to be commonplace on today's battlefield after successfully using drones to locate
15:24the enemy objective apache 3-4 a 2cr platoon moves in hey we got drone drone
15:42a 2cr pilot uses a drone to harass and distract the op 4 soldiers
15:47creating an opportunity for 2cr to seize the trench
15:56help up here take a knee pull security that way what you're doing there what was going on with that
16:01drone that was flying during the ambush i honestly think that that drone was there just to harass us
16:06and annoy us because especially with that very loud motors that it's using to fly around it's quite
16:11loud and it kind of distracts us to our main mission which is to defend the trench and the way that
16:17thing is just flying around i hell if i could beat that guy i wouldn't shake his head until he's a
16:21good damn pilot we got to see the drones be effective we also saw some of the struggles that
16:29they're dealing with and some things that they're gonna take back to the lab and address but as the
16:35sergeant major said these are good lessons and this is why they're out here is to test things and see
16:40what works see what doesn't and then go back to the drawing board and hopefully have the technology
16:45updated for the next training exercise
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