The U.S. Army is rewriting its foundational training manual to include unmanned systems alongside traditional soldier skills.
Senior leaders gathered in Washington for the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting to outline how the force is adapting to modern battlefields. Alongside new training pipelines, defense firms rolled out wearable augmented reality systems and layered air-defense hardware designed to counter high-volume drone threats.
Command Sgt. Maj. Jesse Clark of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment told attendees that the service must integrate small unmanned aerial systems, counter-drone measures, and electromagnetic signature camouflage into daily training alongside historic basics like marksmanship and map reading. "Everyone needs to know these basics because it’s going to be required whether you’re on the frontline or you’re back in the rear because we’re going to have UAS all over the place," Clark said. Concurrently, industry vendors unveiled new hardware, including BAE Systems' Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon System and Twenty-Six Defense's Primex wearable augmented reality gear, built to feed drone imagery directly into a soldier's field of view.
These changes reflect a wider institutional effort to ready conventional units for contested environments like Europe's Eastern Flank, where exercises such as Project Flytrap test mobile counter-drone tactics at the battalion level. At the same time, the Army is attempting to modernize garrison life, reporting high utilization rates at newly opened campus-style dining facilities operated by private contractors at installations like Fort Carson and Fort Hood.
Whether these rushed training pipelines and contractor-run dining halls can fix a stretched force remains to be seen.