Steel and Silicon: The Case for Teaming Armored Formations with UAVs

Charlie Phelps

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Dawn broke over the rolling hills of Eastern Europe as Task Force Loki, a combined arms battalion, prepared to breach a fortified enemy defensive belt. Intelligence reports confirmed that an enemy motorized rifle regiment had emplaced antitank ditches, minefields, and dismounted infantry armed with antitank guided missiles and supported by artillery. Instead of pushing scouts blindly into the kill zone, the battalion launched a swarm of rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from the turrets of the lead tanks and fixed-wing drones from the battalion’s organic multidomain reconnaissance element. Within minutes, overhead feeds revealed camouflaged fighting positions, artillery hides, and an unseen second belt of defense two kilometers to the rear.

One drone, a loitering munition linked to the battalion’s AI-enabled targeting system, locked onto a thermal signature of personnel in a tree line confirming the presence of a fighting position. A second drone armed with advanced imagining systems and pattern recognition software queued and confirmed the presence of a wire-guided antitank weapon system. Seconds later, the enemy antitank team was gone. This process was rapidly repeated over a dozen times in a matter of minutes as surveillance UAVs communicated targeting information in real time to additional loitering munitions. Another UAV dropped decoy electronic emitters mimicking armored formations maneuvering to a breach point, drawing enemy artillery onto empty ground. As enemy sensors fixated on the deception point, the true breach force moved up under cover of smoke and UAV overwatch. Thermobaric munitions impacted enemy bunkers and pillboxes just prior to direct fire suppression from Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Combat engineers, guided by real-time drone feeds, cleared a safe lane through the obstacle belt. An M1A2 platoon surged forward, supported by dismounted infantry and Apache attack helicopters conducting synchronized fires on vehicle positions identified by UAVs. The vulnerability of the attack helicopters was reduced through the employment of cheap, small UAVs whose purpose was to serve as targets for enemy air defense systems.