Fort Benning soldiers optimize drone capabilities at new innovation lab
FORT BENNING, Ga. () — The U.S. Army has been implementing drone technology into its operations for years, in an effort to reduce unnecessary soldier deaths. Fort Benning's experimental force and Maneuver Innovation Lab play key roles in optimizing drone capabilities.
'Alright, just go through the box there,' Sgt. Zakary Kinard instructs Pfc. Sebastian Kelleher, who is piloting palm-sized drone through an obstacle course.
Kinard and Kelleher both work with the U.S. Army's experimental force. Part of their mission is training with drone technology, as well as collaborating with Fort Benning's new Maneuver Innovation Lab.
An infantryman by training, Kelleher has adapted to working with his team but it was jarring at first.
'Being that I was mainly trained to have a weapon on ground and walk with my feet, having a drone in hand was completely new,' Kelleher said.
He joined the Army about a year-and-a-half ago, joining the experimental force after finishing his initial training. The job has involved plenty on-the-spot learning.
'A lot of this is experimental, so his [Kinard's] training is directly, like, applied to what you're going to be doing outside,' Kelleher said. 'You've got to trust your equipment, trust your team.'
Working with the Maneuver Innovation Lab, the experimental force tests drones and other technology, optimizing it for use by the Army.
The lab is a collaboration between soldiers, Columbus State University students, vendors, contractors and potential contractors, who work together to identify technology strengths and weaknesses and engineer solutions.
For drones, they're looking at everything from visuals and range to battery life and load-carrying capacity, which all impact usage in military operations.
'The purpose of, you know, the Black Hornet, all the different aerial assets that we have, is to, you know, gain situational awareness on the battlefield,' Kinard said. 'It minimizes the threat level to us ourselves and partnering forces.'
The Black Hornet is a short-range reconnaissance drone. According to Kinard, the Army can use it in place of a human to conduct surveillance and check hallways and rooms for signs of danger.
'We always want to put the technology in front of the forces just to eliminate casualties,' Kinard said.
But using drone technology in place of soldiers can still come with caveats.
According to Kelleher, the Black Hornet drone, specifically, is slow-moving and has a battery life of just 40 minutes. Its docking station has a battery life of three hours and a charge time of about an hour-and-a-half.
Drones are also unable to gather all of the same information a human would.
'As soldiers, we're trained to have, to use, all of our senses,' said Kinard. 'So, we're not necessarily getting all the feedback that we would if we had an actual soldier out there.'
Whether a soldier will go in person or use a drone to conduct reconnaissance depends on the situation and its risk level.
Kinard said, 'There's times that we would put a person out there. We just try to eliminate it as much as possible with the assets that we have.'
According to Kelleher, some recent suggestions the experimental force has made at the Maneuver Innovation Lab are already being implemented.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Inside the US Army's C2 upgrade – what industry can expect
Within the Army Transformation Initiative, the Army's Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) effort represents a fundamental change in delivering data-driven C2 to our formations. From requirements to resourcing, acquisition and contracting, every gear in the system is being rebuilt to drive smarter, faster, and more effective outcomes. The scope and pace of this change is creating both opportunities and questions as industry adapts with us. We're delivering seamlessly integrated C2 capability from corps down to squad. The key is a data integration layer that enables a rapid buildout of applications across warfighting functions such as fires, intelligence, logistics, and protection, and provides a common operating picture across all. The integrated data layer is the foundation for multifunctional artificial intelligence-enabled models that will rapidly augment decision making and speed. Commercial hardware and software is critical to achieving the NGC2 vision. The Army's tech refresh cycles for C2-enabling components lag their commercial equivalents, leading to persistent obsolescence. To overcome this we must buy truly commercial technology – not commercially-modified 'Franken-products' that make us a unique customer and take us off the path of affordability and innovation. The Army's current C2 capabilities are largely provided through individual efforts: separate requirements documents, funding lines, contracts, and acquisition programs, tied together through top-down driven architectures with pre-determined information exchanges. The isolation and rigidity of this model has largely failed to deliver adaptable or integrated capability to the field. NGC2's solution is to establish a core program that sets the foundations for an emergent technical architecture, with other ecosystem programs built around it. The NGC2 technology stack consists of a set of layers for network, computing, data, and applications, powered by commercially-driven open interfaces and common services. NGC2 also simplifies requirements via a four-page 'Characteristics of Need' that describes the problem instead of dictating the solution. Similarly, the Army is consolidating a multitude of C2-related funding lines into a combined NGC2 capability portfolio, enabling the rapid re-direction of resources as the program evolves. The Army will initially contract with two or more industry team leads who are accountable for the performance of the core program as well as the entire ecosystem. It differs from the standard systems integrator model in several ways: The Army encourages non-exclusive teams, freeing up component providers to partner across different leads; the Army will directly engage on technical, financial and contractual matters with the individual companies that are members of the industry teams, not just the team leads; the Army will minimize the amount of government-furnished information and equipment that will be directed outright; the Army will identify public-private partnerships or similar mechanisms to ensure that we maintain technical currency on NGC2 implementations, resulting in lower risk and switching costs; the Army will not cede its role as an informed buyer to technical assistance consultants who are paid by the hours they spend instead of the outcomes they drive. The Army prefers industry self-organization in identifying complimentary NGC2 solutions. However, these solutions do not all need to be provided under the team lead contract, nor under the core NGC2 program. The Army may separately contract for a component capability, or even manage it as an individual acquisition program. But in every case, the Army will discuss components with the team leads to ensure they work together with the NGC2 architecture. Vendors may bid as a team lead or serve as a component provider (or both). Vendors interested in the latter can do so through business-to-business partnership with a team lead, or directly through the Army under an associated contract agreement that connects them to a team lead. As the architecture matures, vendors can also build to the open interfaces in the NGC2 design. This will enable rapid development and procurement of applications and AI models, for example, without a direct or government-brokered relationship with any team lead. There is inherent tension between ongoing competition and the funding assurance that comes from winning contracts. To balance this, the Army intends to maintain a continuous open solicitation to enable the introduction of new capability at any time, while also advertising specific 'windows' for decision points. For example, following the current round of competition, the next window may be after the first Corps Headquarters and two Divisions are fielded. Key concepts in contracting for NGC2 capability will include fixed price and outcome-driven efforts, common sense price reasonableness determinations, and 'as a service' models for use and consumption – both for hardware and software. The Army must evolve and adapt, and its C2 systems are critical to this transformation. By simultaneously transforming Army institutional processes for requirements, resourcing, acquisition and contracting, the comprehensive strategy described here will clear a path toward this vision. Joseph Welch is the deputy to the commanding general of Army Futures Command.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Army medics were moving blood to the frontlines with drones in a major recent exercise
When medics with the 173rd Airborne Brigade called for blood supplies to treat combat wounds in a major exercise last month, the flying machines slashed life-saving minutes in transport time and used fewer troops to do it. 'The difference is someone dying and someone not, because four minutes is substantially faster than 20 or 30,' said 1st Sgt. Cyril Clayton, a senior medic with the 173rd Brigade. 'As far as risk to the force goes, we've cut it from probably five to two.' The Army has long relied on the bravery of helicopter pilots or fast-moving ground vehicles to get medical resources into the hands of medics treating wounded soldiers on the frontlines, including blood supplies. In a recent exercise held in Lithuania, that meant moving blood supplies three to four kilometers, which could take five soldiers 20 to 30 minutes in a field ambulance. But for Swift Response 2025, a mobility and airborne exercise with Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden across the Baltic and Arctic regions, the 173rd used drones to move blood. The use of drones is part of the Army's effort to move blood supplies faster and closer to soldiers injured in combat, as the U.S. prepares for a large-scale conflict with more casualties but fewer chances for safe air evacuations to hospitals outside of combat. U.S. military researchers have estimated that 15–20% of traumatic deaths are potentially preventable, and 66–80% of deaths are caused by blood loss. In addition to cutting down on risk to the service's already-limited medical personnel, using drones to carry blood supplies was also a stepping stone towards a future where the drones could transport injured patients from the front lines to field hospitals for life-saving care, said Maj. David Hourani, a surgeon for the 173rd Airborne Brigade. 'The force of drone movement on human tissues is about as good as we can do prior to actual humans,' Hourani said. Army medics use a range of blood supplies, including whole blood, red cells, platelets, and plasma. For each. Personnel have to keep it on ice until ready to use. During Saber Junction in September, line medics parachuted with blood supplies — a technique that they quickly learned was not the best option because of the need to maintain the temperature with ice. 'There's definitely a limited shelf life on how long we can keep units,' Clayton said. 'The requirements for ice are heavy and anytime you're going to jump something under canopy, that's a concern so they need rapid ability to either recool or have access to ice, which are both tall orders.' Additionally, the violent G-forces and impacts of parachuting can cause damage to the blood cells' outer membrane. 'Main concern for us is — is it safe to deliver human tissue at those speeds, at the force being applied to that tissue? Is it still gonna be viable when it gets to the patient that needs it?' Clayton said. 'Each of those cells in that bag is potentially life-saving. Any force outside of normal parameters could potentially damage those cells … and then they're no longer viable for resuscitation.' The exercise began with blood support detachment personnel bringing whole blood supplies to medical laboratory specialists at a main command post. There, teams loaded up around 18 units of blood — enough for roughly five casualties, depending on injuries — onto the drones in a Collins Box, a cardboard shipping container with Styrofoam insulation. The technicians loaded and then flew the drone to the field hospital, said Capt. Jessica Knoll, commander of the brigade's support medical company. Once the blood was delivered, the operators flew the drone back to the command post for another resupply. They were able to make two long-distance movements of three to four kilometers into battle and three smaller-scale rehearsals. 'In an actual combat theater, it could be 20-30 [kilometers],' Clayton said. 'I don't think there would be any issues with temperature for that amount of time. The biggest thing is going to be the navigation piece. They're just covering that much distance.' From the exercise, the medical team realized two challenges: resources and airspace. In order to keep drones powered up for hours or flying, they needed a tent to house the equipment, a generator to charge batteries and a viewing station for the operators. In a future large-scale conflict, militaries will need to 'deconflict' the airspace above the battlefield, accounting for thousands of drones and regular aircraft like helicopters taking flight above ground forces. 'If a helicopter is coming in low, the drones are grounded, whereas if the helicopter is maintaining airspace above 500 feet, drones are good to fly at 100-200 feet,' Knoll said. 'It really comes down to the drone operator being aware of what's going on and then being able to quickly react to any incursions into our reserve airspace to ensure that there's no in-air collisions.' As the Army expands the number of drones within its formations, the service is planning to have drone experts down to the platoon level in infantry and artillery units. But for medical companies, the use cases will look and feel different. In combat, medics are considered 'protected' under the rules of war set by the Geneva Convention, which means their drones cannot be used for offensive operations. 'For medical, we have to adhere to the Geneva Convention, all of ours are resupply, in which case, they are much bigger because they have to be able to handle a payload,' Knoll said. 'Our concerns are making sure that we're using the drones defensively and not offensively, and ultimately to render aid to service members in need and not for defense.' The 173rd Medical Company tested Class II-designated drones, which weigh between 21 and 55 pounds, and fly as high as 3,500 feet. During the exercise, they used the TRV 150 cargo drone, which is roughly 8.5 feet long and 6 feet wide, weighs around 125 pounds, and can carry 150 pounds of cargo. They also used the FlyingBasket drone, which is around 5 feet wide, weighs 150 pounds and can carry up to 220 pounds. Knoll said that the two drone teams weren't confident flying more than 30 minutes at a time because of the drone's battery life. They also kept the drones within five kilometers for communication. 'We need more training. We need more time with the pilots flying the drones,' Knoll said. 'Then we need the platform to be available for us to do that training and we definitely want to continue developing this and really push the limits of what these drones are capable of so that we can push the limits of what we can do medically.' The 173rd company plans to use drones for blood resupply at exercises next fall and spring. In the meantime, their drone pilots will continue running simulations with and without payloads. Navy SEAL Team 6 operator will be the military's new top enlisted leader Veterans receiving disability payments might have been underpaid, IG finds Guam barracks conditions are 'baffling,' Navy admiral says in email Navy fires admiral in charge of unmanned systems office after investigation The Pentagon wants troops to change duty stations less often
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Seeing farther, striking deeper, this brigade is pushing its drones
Soldiers with the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division are in the midst of a training exercise with Philippine allies that has them pushing farther and striking deeper with the help of new drones. The 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, is forward deployed in the Philippines, training with the 7th Infantry Division of the Philippine Armed Forces as part of a Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, or JPMRC, exercise. Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, 25th Infantry Division commanding general, told Army Times on Monday that the most challenging part of the exercise so far has been the environmental factors. High temperatures and monsoon conditions have slammed troops as they've operated across islands and jungles in the Luzon area of the Philippines. The exercise marks the brigade's second evolution of the Army's Transformation in Contact, or TIC, initiative following its first evolution in 2024. As part of the initiative, which seeks to modernize and evolve formations as they prepare for real-world deployments, soldiers received new drones, counter-drone equipment and electronic warfare tools. First armor brigade conducts combat training center rotation with new tools Since then, the unit has been issued farther-reaching drones with both medium- and long-range capabilities, giving soldiers nearly 10 times the range of previous drones. Last year, units were limited to about a 3-kilometer distance for drones to scout enemy locations. Now they can see, sense and strike targets as far as 30 kilometers out, Evans said. 'It creates increased survivability,' Evans said of the striking range. 'It enhances their ability to protect themselves with greater standoff and strike with loitering munitions or weaponized drones.' Meanwhile, the brigade also brought 3D printing capabilities, which it has used to make replacement parts for equipment and build nearly 50 first-person-view drones so far during the exercise, he said. The brigade brought an estimated 2,000 soldiers from Hawaii and Guam for the exercise, with Philippine partners bringing about the same amount of manpower. They're facing off against a simulated battalion-size enemy force equipped with its own drone, counter-drone and electronic warfare capabilities. During its Philippine rotation last year, which was also an exportable combat training center evolution, the brigade didn't have infantry squad vehicles. This time, however, it does, and the vehicles have made a major difference for troops in both mobility and sustainability, Evans said. The Army's TIC initiative first focused on the brigade level with dismounted units. The second iteration is looking to make similar changes in mechanized or armor formations. That also ties in division-level assets. On this run for the 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, the 25th Infantry Division is using its headquarters to simulate a larger force and bringing division assets, such as long-range fires, to the brigade. Troops are also using the 25th Infantry Division headquarters to synchronize and integrate with the Philippine's 7th Infantry Division headquarters, Evans said. '[Their] main objective is procedural interoperability,' Evans said. 'U.S. and Philippine forces train sustainment, movement and maneuver together. See further, sense better and be able to strike.' Following the initial field training, the units will gather at Fort Magsaysay, Philippines, and then conduct a combined maritime, land and air movement of more than 400 kilometers into 'enemy' territory north of the outpost to Camp Melchor F. dela Cruz in mid-June, he said.
