Out in the islands of the western Pacific, the US Army and a strategic ally are landing aircraft in places they don’t know, testing new drones and sensors, and trying to keep soldiers hidden in the electromagnetic spectrum.
The training is focused on adapting to the quickening pace of innovation on the battlefield, a general told Business Insider.
In the Philippines, soldiers from Hawaii’s 25th Infantry Division are conducting their annual Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center- Exportable exercise. The division and its Philippine counterparts, about 2,000 personnel, are preparing for the possibility of a conflict in the Pacific.
The threat of a war with China is at the forefront of US military thinking about the region.
The environment poses the biggest challenge. This area is largely tropical, mostly water with islands scattered about. Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of the division, said temperatures are high and soldiers are grappling with the rain, wind, and humidity from monsoon season. These environmental factors are impacting how drones operate and how troops sustain themselves.
US Army Photo by Spc. Matthew Keegan
The exercise stretches across land, air, and sea, among other combat domains, and the operations are testing soldiers. “Each and every day, they are having to fly in varying terrain to different helicopter landing zones working around the different weather patterns,” Evans said of the air operations. Some pilots are flying in temperatures and landing on terrain with which they are unfamiliar.
On the ground, troops are learning to drive infantry squad vehicles that can move over sand and through jungles. The vehicles carry everything soldiers will need when they’re alone in the environment — more water, food, and power are priorities. At an exercise last year, troops were given bottled water. Now, they’re working with a purification system that allows them to draw water from rivers and streams.
Among the weapons they’re working with are emerging technologies like drones, which come with challenges. They’re flying shorter distances and for less time due to the temperature and weather.
Soldiers are also working with counter-uncrewed aerial systems, reconnaissance and electronic warfare capabilities, and technology to help obscure or hide signatures from enemies. Much of it is a glimpse at what soldiers would need in the future war.
The exercise is a sort of stress-test, not just not on the vehicles, aircraft, weapons, and systems, but also the individual soldier. They’re operating the drones across formations, using counter-UAS systems to defeat enemy drones, and looking at the electromagnetic spectrum to keep hidden.
US Army Photo by Spc. Aiden O’Marra
It’s also an opportunity for troops to innovate from the bottom up. Warfare technology is moving at breakneck speeds — urging, as Evans said, the need to be more agile in employing them but also knowing the threats and how to defend against them.
He told BI about one soldier who was flying a first-person view drone. They used a medium-range reconnaissance drone to “serve as a pathfinder,” effectively navigating the FPV drone behind the reconnaissance one to have a better sense of the battlefield and get in a position to strike enemy targets.
“No one had talked to him about [that], trained him on [it], but he was innovating with the equipment that he was given,” Evans said.
In Evans’ view, having the soldiers out there working with and learning from the Philippine Army is crucial. “The longer we stay in the field, the more things that we can stress, the more things we test out and understand the true limitations in this kind of harsh environment,” he said.
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