Watch: US Army Conducts ‘Drone Swarm’ Exercise With Armed Quadcopters

While unmanned aerial vehicles such as the multi-million dollar General Atomics MQ-1 Predator are armed with missiles, a new generation of inexpensive “kamikaze” drones is reshaping the battlefield. 

The US military worries that these low-cost and deadly-effective drones could shift the global strategic balance away from the US on the modern battlefield.

To counter such emerging threats, the Army decided to conduct a field training exercise involving “a swarm of 40 quadcopters all equipped with cameras, MILES, and lethal munition,” tweeted the Commanding General of the National Training Center and Fort Irwin.

The startling video (tweeted on Sunday evening) shows the quadcopters zooming by what appears to be a makeshift desert town. There was no confirmation on location though it could’ve been at the Fort Irwin training facility in southern California. There was also no confirmation of when the training exercise was conducted. 

At sunrise this morning a swarm of 40 quadcopters all equipped with cameras, MILES, and lethal munition capable launched in advance of 11th ACR’s attack on a prepared defense by 1AD. Drones will be as important in the first battle of the next war as artillery is today. pic.twitter.com/zPQ2I8SoqN

— NTC Lead 6 (@NTCLead6) September 11, 2022

“Drones will be as important in the first battle of the next war as artillery is today,” the Army’s Twitter account concluded. 

Perhaps the Army has discovered the same quadcopters bought on Amazon have been powerful tools in the war against Russia in Ukraine. The weaponization of such drones is even more powerful as some have been turned into suicide drones. 

The Pentagon has supplied Ukraine with over 700 Switchblade “kamikaze” military drones. The future of warfare appears to be clear to the Army: small suicide drones for precision strikes will be necessary on any modern battlefield.