The U.S. Army stood up a battalion of about 600 soldiers in January to work out how to fight with drones, and four members of Congress now want to know why it is being wound down before its first birthday. In a letter dated September 1 to departing Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and acting Chief of Staff General Christopher LaNeve, Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Thom Tillis and Angus King and Representative Mike Turner asked for a briefing on the decision by September 21.
Inside the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the paratroopers headquartered in Vicenza, Italy, the unit in question is the Unmanned Assault Battalion. Stars and Stripes reports that General LaNeve recently ordered the brigade to refocus on being an airborne infantry unit, and that the battalion is expected to take part in an exercise in Germany in September and report its findings before it is phased out.
Think of the battalion as a skunkworks with jump wings. A normal infantry unit treats a drone as one more piece of kit in the rucksack. This one was built so that drones were the point: study what Ukrainian forces have learned on the front line, turn it into tactics, and lend that expertise to whichever formation needed it. The lawmakers describe the idea as "a force multiplier across the entire formation." I once flew a consumer quadcopter into the same hedge twice, so I respect anyone trying to turn this into doctrine.
The letter itself is polite and pointed. The lawmakers wrote: "We are particularly keen to understand the data, analysis and process used to cancel this innovative unit established less than a year ago, and if this decision was based on Department of Defense leadership guidance or was an Army-internal decision." That last clause is the interesting one. It asks whether the Pentagon told the Army to do this, or whether the Army decided on its own.
Their case rests on timing. The letter concedes that the 173rd is at its core an infantry formation and that the cut fits General LaNeve's "back to basics" message to the force, which the lawmakers say was published on August 18. Their objection is that the same message tells soldiers to learn and adapt faster, and that closing the battalion without naming a new home for its drone expertise cuts against that. In their words: "This specialized unit was a prudent response in a moment when the character of warfare is changing faster than a conventional formation’s ability to adapt."
There is a bigger argument underneath. The lawmakers tie the decision to what they call an uneven Pentagon commitment to Europe, and they describe the move as "yet another worrying signal of fledgling resolve in the European theater" in a letter that asks for the data rather than asserting the answer. The Army's reasoning is the unknown, and the briefing is the mechanism for getting it.
The timing is awkward for one more reason. Stars and Stripes reports that Driscoll, a vocal proponent of Army modernization, is leaving, with his last full day in the job a day after the letter went in. The lawmakers write that they want the momentum of his initiatives maintained "even as uniformed leadership changes."
What happens next is either a briefing by September 21 or an explanation of why not. If the Army can show where the drone lessons go once the battalion folds, the letter reads as due diligence. If it cannot, the question of who in the Army owns drone warfare is likely to come back, louder, at the next budget hearing.
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