Fayetteville, North Carolina – Three small drones hovered overhead, piloted by soldiers on laptops. As part of soldiers’ initial training for months of drone-on-drone combat on the battlefields of Ukraine, two Bumblebee drones were steered to collide with a third.
The training was held last week at Fort Bragg for a small group of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, part of the Pentagon’s effort to produce inexpensive counter-drone systems that can be quickly and easily deployed by service members.
Soldiers trained on both the Bumblebee V1, a small, first-person-view drone that has seen thousands of combat flights over Ukraine, and the new Bumblebee V2, which has automatic target recognition specifically to counter other drones and which has yet to be deployed.
Much of the training was on the Bumblebee V1, which is already being used by other Soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division, according to Sgt. Maj. Kellen Rowley, who is senior enlisted adviser for the Pentagon’s interagency counter-drone task force.
L: Two Bumblebee V1s moments after crashing into each other to take it down. R: Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division piloting a Bumblebee V1 from a laptop. / Credit: Eleanor Watson / CBS News
Rowley said training for the V1 is taking place at several domestic bases, as well as at a training center for U.S. Central Command in the Middle East. As more service members flow into the Middle East, they will also be able to begin the same type of initial training in these systems.
“They take the skills necessary to do drone-on-drone combat,” Rowley said of the training. “The response we’ve heard so far is ‘I’m not going to learn this in five minutes, but if I have 40 hours dedicated to learning how to figure this out,’ they’ll be an effective operator.”
The Department of Defense has formed a task force to coordinate with other government agencies on countering drones. The war in Ukraine, drone attacks near US military bases and now the conflict with Iran have shown the urgency to develop this technology quickly.
Bumblebee is a smaller system that the military is looking to use, instead of more expensive interceptors that were developed primarily to intercept incoming missiles. The U.S. military’s war with Iran has raised concerns about the U.S. stockpile of such weapons.
Bumblebee V1 drone at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. / Credit: Department of Defense
“There’s a cost curve challenge, using aggressive drones that we’re using to shoot them down,” said Lt. Col. Alex Morse, who manages acquisitions for the task force.
“Typically our defensive capability is in the millions or millions. It’s way below that,” Morse said, holding up a prototype of the Bumblebee V2. “And we will continue to drive costs into the single digits in the thousands.”
Both versions are small enough for a soldier. They have four legs with a propeller, a camera in the middle and a battery. The difference in the versions is that while the V1 requires the pilot to manually adjust speed and altitude to lock onto the target, the V2 has autonomous targeting software to lock onto a target approved by the pilot. The V2 has additional camera sensors and a gimbal camera, not fixed, so it can move up and down.
According to military officials, the Bumblebees are designed to take down smaller drones than the Iranian-made Shaheds, which are estimated to be 400 pounds and used by both Iran and Russia.
Both are produced by Perennial Autonomy, a US defense firm backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, which has experts in training to collect feedback from the military.
“What we don’t want to do is produce something and have 10,000 things that don’t work,” Col. Tom Monaghan, director of the Army’s Joint Innovation Center, told reporters.
Two demonstrations reporters saw Thursday at Fort Bragg included three Bumblebee V1s, two working as a team against a third drone that was designated as an enemy drone.
The enemy drone stood in one spot, as if it was gathering intelligence, and the other two drones accelerated and revved at the enemy drone to take it down.
Each drone can be flown by a single pilot who controls the drone from a computer, but in this training scenario, the soldiers worked as a team. Two or three soldiers sit next to each laptop and then one soldier walks behind them coordinating between the teams. Together, the soldiers worked out the direction, altitude and speed of enemy drones before calling them when to attack.
In the demonstrations, there were a few misses where the drone passed right past the enemy drone, and twice, the drones collided without completely taking down the enemy drone. After the drone was hit by another drone, the soldiers proceeded to recover both drones and added them to the pile of damaged drones from previous training sessions.
L: A soldier holds a damaged Bumblebee V1 drone after being attacked by another drone. R: A swarm of bumblebees damaged after being targeted by other drones in training at Fort Bragg. / Credit: Eleanor Watson / CBS News
The training reporters saw was aimed at soldiers, officials said, so the drones would only hover in one place, and as the pilots improved, there would be various iterations, including testing the drones in environments with electronic jamming.
“It’s the first day for these kids — they’re doing an amazing job,” Ted Chavis, senior adviser to the task force director, told reporters as he listed the skills the soldiers were trained in: crew drills, marksmanship, drone construction, mission planning and coordination.
“They’re going to go out and train tomorrow. They’re going to train next week. And then they’re going to come back in a couple of weeks and do more advanced training,” Chavis said.
The Pentagon also plans to put more money behind the effort. This year’s budget request includes about $75 billion for drones, which is “the largest investment in drone warfare and counter-drone technology in American history,” Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hirst told reporters last week.
