High intensity, low altitude — it's going to find you, and attack you. Again and again..The US Army's drone "wolf pack" is coming and there's not really much anyone, especially an enemy, can do about it..No scary, threatening videos that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) likes to release to do their sabre rattling — knowing full well, this generation has never engaged in a major conflict..A bunch of hot air and bravado..Thankfully, the US Army doesn't work like that..As the service heads into its annual Project Convergence War Games, the aviation branch is building on earlier experiments with promising new technologies and tactics, officials said during this week’s annual Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, D.C..I've been to the AUSA show and I'm a card carrying AUSA member. It is one of the most amazing military trade shows and exhibitions on the planet..You name it, it's there.. Drones were launched from airborne helicopters and racks mounted on trucks.Drones were launched from airborne helicopters and racks mounted on trucks. .And this year, there were a few surprises, namely the follow-up from this summer's EDGE 22 exercise (Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise) which saw Canadian Armed Forces soldiers take part..The latter featured the first live flight of drones programmed to use collaborative tactics consciously modelled on a “wolf pack” attack group, Breaking Defense reported..Make no mistake, this is a major revamp of existing military tactics — the world is changing, rapidly, and so is the US Army..“We demonstrated with multiple, multiple waves of drones that came in [to] see what’s out there and report back what we need to go after,” said Jeffrey Langhout, director of the Army’s Aviation and Missile Center..“Then the next wave comes in, takes care of business. And then another wave comes in and does the assessment and sees if we need to do additional [strikes].”.TCOB ... just like the immortal Elvis said. But this business can be a bit more nasty..That cycle — see, strike, re-look, re-strike as needed — is critical, said Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, aviation modernization director at Army Futures Command, referring to ALE — military jargon for “Air Launched Effects.”.“It’s lost on some people we need to assess [and] understand if you’ve set the conditions” for further manoeuvre..In other words, one better be confident that the waves of deep-scouting, deep-striking drones have successfully blasted a path through the adversary’s anti-aircraft defences..Then and only then, do you send assault aircraft — packed with young pilots — to fly behind enemy lines and land ground troops, destroying critical targets and seizing key terrain.. Artist's rendition of a drone swarm.Artist's rendition of a drone swarm. .But even with unmanned systems paving the way, can manned aircraft really survive the airspace over a high-tech, high-intensity battlefield?.Yes, Rugen told Breaking Defense — with the right technology, techniques and tactics..Russian pilots over Ukraine have showed how not to do this, he argued..“Poor tactics… ill-discipline… flying over the same route at a high altitude during the day, that’ll get your jaw busted every time, twice on Sunday,” he said..But flying low, fast, and unpredictably, with accurate intelligence provided by drones, US Army aviators can move through the gaps in enemy defences..What did Jester say, after Maverick followed him below the hard deck at Top Gun, in the movie of the same name?."He's a wild card ... totally unpredictable.".The might be cinema magic, but it's exactly what has been presaged in tomorrow's air-to-air combat scenario..The idea is to exploit the unique nature of what the Army awkwardly calls the ”lower-tier air domain” — the space in between the ground-pounders and the high-fliers, where helicopters fly high enough to zip over obstacles but low enough to take cover behind terrain..“There’s a ton of gaps that we can fight in,” Rugen said..Theoretically, this should allow Army aviators to fly under the anti-aircraft radars that threaten jets, while maneuvering and striking much faster than ground forces, Breaking Defense reported..“If you do it right, if you set the conditions,” Rugen said, “this tempo [of attack] at greater distances, at greater speeds, with greater agility on the edge, is going to break ‘em.”.That's a big claim — and a lot is riding on it..Gambling on waves of rotating wolf pack drones to do the dirty work, is an entirely new way of battlefield tactics..The drone experiment took place at Dugway Proving Ground near Salt Lake City, Utah, as part of EDGE 22, an annual convening of Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team and nearly 20 units and organizations from across the US Army, industry partners and international Allies coming together to assess new tactics and technologies..The exercise featured reps from across the Department of Defense and included soldiers from Canada, Italy and Germany..The wolf packs deployed in this year’s experiment consisted of four waves of seven drones each. The drones were equipped to conduct reconnaissance to detect, identify, locate and report back enemy positions, Flying Magazine reported..The drones were launched from airborne helicopters and racks mounted on trucks..A swarm that can be put into the sky from vehicles on the ground lets the Army operate with overhead scouting even if it has no friendly aircraft flying nearby, Popular Science reported..By also deploying drones from helicopters, it showed that swarms can cover not just extra scouting in advance of an aerial attack, but that the swarms themselves can fly out and catch early anti-aircraft fire, exhausting stockpiles of missiles before the crewed aircraft get close..The specific drones used in the swarm were ALTIUS 600s, a tube-launched drone that works with modular payloads. This allows the drones to be outfitted with specific sensors for a given mission, jammers to counter other drones, or even explosive payloads so the drone can be turned into a Switchblade-like suicide weapon..Questions remain, such as, just how smart should they make drone swarms — an AI weapon that actually learns and improves after each military operation..Brainstorming these ideas has forced officials to think outside the box, said Dr. Will Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.."I went to [leadership] and said, 'Hey, I'd like to throw 100 micro-UAVs out of fighters.' And they said, 'OK, great, tell me the flight plan for each one.' Well, I don't have one," Roper said. ."They're going to do their own thing. But I can draw a box and make sure they don't leave that box. And that's just an example of how we have to require different kinds of thinking.". A helicopter launches a drone.A helicopter launches a drone.
