U.S. Army drills drone defense in Germany

U.S. Army air defense crews in Germany fired live rounds at aerial targets alongside AH-64 Apache attack helicopters during Operation Skyfall II, an exercise built around sharing drone-tracking data between ground radars and aircraft.

The training took place on Oct. 5 at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Bavaria, according to U.S. Army photos released from the event. Crews from the 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, part of the 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, operated SGT STOUT air defense vehicles and Sentinel radars, while Apache crews from the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade flew in the same exercise. The U.S. Army said the goal was to train crews to pass real-time targeting and early-warning information between ground sensors and aircraft to counter unmanned aerial threats.

SGT STOUT is the U.S. Army’s Stryker-based Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense system, built to travel with armored and mechanized units and protect them from drones, helicopters and low-flying aircraft. Its turret carries Stinger missiles, Hellfire missiles, a 30 mm cannon, a machine gun and its own radar. The Sentinel is a mobile radar that detects and tracks low-flying aircraft and drones and feeds that information to air defense units.

The 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment was the first U.S. Army unit to receive SGT STOUT, getting its first systems in April 2021 and becoming fully equipped in late 2022. The U.S. Army has since fielded the vehicle to battalions at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Linking air and ground sensors lets a unit spot a drone with one system and engage it with another. A helicopter flying above treetops can see targets a ground radar may miss, and a ground radar can cue a helicopter crew toward a threat before they see it themselves.

The U.S. Army is also working on lighter short-range air defense for units that do not operate Strykers. Its next version, M-SHORAD Increment 4, is planned as a pallet-mounted system that can be loaded onto light vehicles, and General Dynamics Land Systems is showing a version on a Ford Ranger pickup at this week’s Association of the U.S. Army meeting.