Army ‘not walking away’ from UAVs despite reverting drone unit back to infantry

WASHINGTON — A key Army official today defended the service’s decision to transition a drone-focused unit back into a conventional infantry battalion, saying the Army is not “walking away” from focusing on the transformative tech.

“Let me be very clear, like we are not slowing down on drones or autonomous systems, and we are not walking away from them,” Alex Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer, told reporters. “So I don’t want anybody to take that as a perception that we’re walking away or this is less important.”

The Europe-based battalion, dubbed the 3rd battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, is part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and was officially designated as an “unmanned systems battalion” in January.

After Miller’s remarks, an Army official said in a statement that the goal was for the battalion to sharpen its knowledge on drone and other autonomous warfare based on lessons learned from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Soldiers within the battalion participated in various exercises and met with Ukrainian drone operators in NATO territory over the past several months, per The Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report that the drone unit would shutter.

But then in August, Acting Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Christopher LaNeve directed the unit to revert back to a traditional infantry unit after it completed two exercises in Germany, with the last one concluding this month, the Army official said.

LaNeve’s direction faced backlash from lawmakers, who requested in a letter to the acting chief and then-Army Secretary Dan Driscoll that they would like to “better understand” the leaders’ decision “to eliminate the drone battalion of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.”

“We have deep concerns that eliminating this specialized drone unit will limit our ability to learn from allies, particularly the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and hinder our efforts to modernize drone warfare at the speed necessary to compete on the modern battlefield,” the lawmakers wrote. “Both the Ukraine-Russia War and the ongoing conflict in Iran have demonstrated our need to make significant improvements in drone warfare — lessons learned from our Ukrainian allies who have proven their ability to innovate and compete in this space.” 

But today Miller said some backlash was “probably” caused by the Army not “telling the full story fast enough,” noting that the service never wanted a permanent specialized drone unit. 

“They were never flagged to be a permanent centralized drone unit. In fact, we pushed back on having something like a drone corps since its inception, because our theory of the case is, if you centralize that in one place, what you lose is the ability to actually scale that learning and send that out to the rest of the Army,” he said. 

Miller added that the Army did not “disband” a drone unit, as the battalion in the 173rd Brigade was always going to be a classic infantry unit, but it was designated to have a drone and autonomy specialization for the “six or seven months before they got their full infantry battalion.” The plan for the initial several months was for the battalion personnel to “learn some of those lessons and then pass them out to the rest of the Army.”

“We’re sort of combating this narrative that we stood something new up and then we killed that new thing and we’re going to sacrifice it at the altar of technology,” he added. “That’s just not true.”