America's Contingency Corps Trains Against Drone Threat, Prepares for Future Battlefields

Sept. 22, 2026 | By Courtesy XVIII Airborne Corps |

The character of warfare is changing, and the growing use of unmanned aircraft systems on battlefields around the world is forcing militaries to adapt faster than ever. 

 
At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the XVIII Airborne Corps is taking on that challenge through Exercise Scarlet Dragon, which brings soldiers and industry partners together to test emerging technologies in realistic field conditions. The exercise helped evaluate which capabilities can integrate across the force, including systems designed to detect, track and defeat unmanned aircraft threats. 
 
"The Scarlet Dragon exercise has become a validation exercise in the dirt with soldiers doing integrated, real-world, operational-type tasks," said Army Col. Tom Monahan, director of the XVIII Airborne Corps' Joint Innovation Outpost. 
 
Held Sept. 11-17 at Fort Bragg, the exercise combined soldiers, military systems, artificial intelligence, resilient data pathways and industry partners to address one of the Army's most pressing challenges: integrating sensors, electronic warfare, command and control and defensive fires against evolving unmanned aircraft threats. 
 
"Basically, [it was] transitioning gaps to capability requirements that we need, capabilities that will fill the gaps, and then running them through the exercise and the experimentation to come away with our findings to support the warfighter," said Army Col. Paul Staeheli, the XVIII Airborne Corps operations officer. 

 
Rather than testing technology in isolation, Scarlet Dragon placed emerging capabilities in an austere field environment where soldiers could evaluate performance against realistic threats and operational problems. 
 
It also replicated tactics and capabilities soldiers could encounter on a future battlefield, including large-scale drone swarms and systems modeled after threats seen in current conflicts. Some scenarios featured swarms of up to 100 unmanned aircraft, giving soldiers the opportunity to train against the scale and complexity of modern drone attacks. 
 
That threat environment allowed the XVIII Airborne Corps to evaluate not only individual systems but also how different capabilities work together. 
 
"What we've found is that there's no one sensor to rule them all," said Army Col. Rob Kenny, the XVIII Airborne Corps chief of fires. "It takes an integrated, layered approach."  

Kenny said the company node is determining how quickly soldiers can sense the threat and pass that information back in time to act. 
 
Electronic warfare, sensors, radar, autonomous systems and defensive fires each provide different tools for detecting, identifying and defeating unmanned aircraft. Integrating those capabilities is critical as adversaries continue to evolve their use of drones. 
 
Scarlet Dragon also demonstrated how the Army can work with industry to develop and integrate new technologies faster. 
 
Leading-edge technology companies worked alongside soldiers to identify operational problems, test potential solutions and gather feedback directly from the field. The partnership gave developers firsthand insight into how their systems perform in realistic military environments, while giving soldiers a chance to shape the technologies they may eventually use. 
 
"The vendors out here are different contractors with different companies trying to show the limitations and capabilities of all their systems," said Army Staff Sgt. Charles Johnson, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the company node. "They're giving the full scope of what their systems can do and how it can help us in the best way possible." 
 
The effort extends beyond developing new equipment. The exercise examined the broader counter-UAS challenge, from passive detection technologies, such as acoustic sensors and portable radar, to autonomous systems and emerging capabilities designed specifically for the UAS fight. 
 
That approach reflects the XVIII Airborne Corps' broader responsibility as America's Contingency Corps. 

 
The exercise also reinforced a larger message about modernization: preparing for the future battlefield requires more than buying new equipment. It requires understanding emerging threats, testing solutions under realistic conditions and rapidly adapting when those solutions fall short. 
 
Through experimentation and collaboration with industry, the XVIII Airborne Corps is working to integrate autonomous technologies with legacy systems and address a rapidly evolving unmanned aircraft threat. 
 
The goal is not simply to observe the future of warfare, but to prepare for it. 
 
As unmanned systems continue to reshape battlefields around the world, exercises such as Scarlet Dragon give the XVIII Airborne Corps an opportunity to learn, adapt and develop the capabilities soldiers will need to maintain an advantage in future conflicts.

Army Upgrades Its Electronic Warfare Training

By John J. Kruzel
American Forces Press Service

Feb. 22, 2007 – U.S. Army soldiers and insurgents have something in common: They share a single electromagnetic spectrum to communicate and launch attacks. "The spectrum is that invisible world inhabited by television transmissions, by all sorts of radios, by cell phones, by satellite links, by GPS links," Army Col. Lauri Moe Buckhout, electronic warfare division chief, told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday.

"In Baghdad you might have American soldiers, coalition soldiers ... an Iraqi friendly forces mother and father talking to each other to coordinate a taxi to pick up their sick son and take him to the hospital," she said. "They are all legitimate users of the spectrum."

Buckhout said the U.S. forces' enemies haven't historically used electronics to wage warfare, but things are changing and the spectrum is wide open.

"In the middle of it, there's a bad guy using a cell phone to make something bad happen," she said. "So we have to get good at finding that one hostile spectrum user and take him out.

"Electronic warfare is defined as using the spectrum to attack an enemy, to deny, degrade, defeat the capabilities of an enemy," Buckhout said. "We need to dominate the spectrum."

The Army's fight to dominate electronic warfare is hampered by its lack of experience, she said. The last time the army wielded electronic warfare as a major tactic, soldiers used "barrage jammers" to prevent enemies from using the spectrum. But these former methods are now ineffective, Buckhout said.

"It was a big box that would radiate electronic death and put out a heavy frequency across a wide spectrum," she said. "You can't do that any more, because think of all the collateral damage you would have."

In response to a changing electronic battlefield, Gen. Richard A. Cody, army vice chief of staff, launched two U.S. Army training courses in October, aimed at giving soldiers an edge.

The "Tactical Course," a three-week session at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., trains soldiers at the battalion level and below. Electronic warfare operators at the brigade level and higher take the "Operational Course," receiving six weeks of training at the Fort Sill, Okla.

One of Cody's directives is to make the Army equally competent in electronic warfare as the other services, Buckhout said.

"(Other branches) have electronic warfare professionals who are PhDs in what they do, and we're just starting out," she said. "We didn't have any (electronic warfare) folks, so the Navy stepped up and said, 'We can help you.'"

These Navy advisors "have been fully integrated, absolutely embraced, and they have taught the Army a whole lot about how to fight this fight," she said.

The Army plans to replace a majority of those advisors with soldiers by March 2008, she added.

Another goal Cody outlined is to make electronic warfare an Army core competency, meaning every soldier will receive training, she said.

The Army will base its approach in part on the Navy model. "Everyone's got to touch it now, which is a huge sea change," Buckhout said. "Each soldier has to understand some basics of electronic warfare - jammers, the threats on the spectrum electronic system that reside in both air and on ground."

Soldiers, ranging from privates engaged in initial training to the chief of staff of the Army, will receive some level of electronic warfare training, she said.

"The Army needs to get smart in electronic warfare so we can handle ourselves in this environment and take control of it rather than having it take control of us," she said.

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