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A battalion built to import Ukraine’s drone tactics is being folded back into standard infantry, and Congress wants to know why.
For nearly a year, the U.S. Army ran a small experiment in Europe built entirely around that idea: a battalion whose job was to study how Ukrainian troops fly, jam and kill with cheap drones, and turn those lessons into American doctrine.
Now the experiment is being shut down, and Congress wants to know why.
The Army is dissolving the roughly 600-soldier Unmanned Assault Battalion inside the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Europe, Stars and Stripes reported, after the Army’s acting chief of staff, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, ordered the brigade to refocus on its traditional airborne infantry mission.
The unit, created in January, will end its drone-specific work after taking part in an exercise in Germany this month.
A bipartisan letter
A bipartisan group of lawmakers sent Army leadership a letter on September 1 pressing for an explanation. The signers are Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Angus King, I-Maine, and Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio.
They wrote that they have “deep concerns that eliminating this specialized drone unit will limit our ability to learn from allies, particularly the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” and warned the move would “hinder our efforts to modernize drone warfare at the speed necessary to compete on the modern battlefield.”
The battalion, the letter argued, was “a prudent response in a moment when the character of warfare is changing faster than a conventional formation’s ability to adapt.” The lawmakers asked the Army to brief them by September 21.
A shutdown that follows a leadership purge
The unit was championed by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and the former commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher Donahue, CBS News reported. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed George in April, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll announced his resignation at the end of August, with his last day on the job on September 2.
LaNeve, who previously served as Hegseth’s senior military assistant at the Pentagon, moved into the acting Army chief role and has framed his tenure around a “back to basics” push.
CBS reported that officials cited a long-running personal rift between LaNeve and Donahue, going back to LaNeve’s removal as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, as one driver of the decision.
What the Army is keeping and what it is dropping
LaNeve has laid out his priorities in a document called “The Army Azimuth,” which emphasizes soldier fundamentals and building in capabilities like defending against enemy drones, but stops short of the drone-first structure his predecessors were building toward.
Ukraine’s military has moved in the opposite direction, standing up a dedicated Unmanned Systems Force rather than parceling drones out to conventional units. The 173rd’s Unmanned Assault Battalion had been the Army’s closest attempt to mirror that model.
After the Germany exercise, the Army says, the battalion will refocus on its core warfighting tasks as an airborne infantry unit. The Army’s response to Congress is due by September 21.
