No money, no problem: Army unit making its own drones

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — With limited resources and funds, an Army unit is looking to make its own drones at a fraction of the cost of commercially available systems procured through traditional acquisition processes.

The service is drawing key lessons from Ukraine, where unmanned aerial systems have been ubiquitous on the battlefield. The Army is now looking for more expendable platforms, a marked change from the past where soldiers were disciplined for losing assets that were allotted to units at specific and known quantities.

“Based off of the fact that we still don’t necessarily have a budget, we’ve been operating under a continuing resolution [since the beginning of fiscal 2025] and there are some fiscal constraints associated what we’ve been doing now, we’ve been trying to figure out what are all the things that we can do a little bit more innovative, a little bit smaller scale. [We] haven’t necessarily gotten any more money to buy any UASs … The team went back and said, OK, well, if we can’t buy anymore, let’s start making our own,” Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, told reporters during a visit to the unit’s home at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Feb. 26.

Now, the Army is taking a somewhat different approach than it has in the past.

Sylvia noted that the division spent “a bunch of money” last year to purchase roughly 20 unmanned systems, which included systems from Skydio, for its 2nd Brigade’s culminating training exercise. He declined to say exactly how much. But more recently, with the unit’s own money — and at a much lower cost, albeit acquiring motors, propellers and controllers — it has been able to 3D print more than 100 small drones.

This approach mirrors where the Army as a whole wants to go, taking key lessons from Ukraine, where units are able to 3D print parts and systems on the battlefield to keep up with the pace of war. Getting systems to the field on a consistent basis will be challenging given the strain on logistics tails that officials anticipate in future conflicts.

The 3D printing of drones is part of a larger Army initiative known as transforming-in-contact, which aims to use deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — that could allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield. The effort is initially focused on UAS, counter-UAS and electronic warfare.

Officials believe that the number of drones employed by units must grow exponentially in the future. Sylvia noted that one of his brigades conducted an exercise at Fort Campbell in February had 100 drones, but now they want 300 UAS available to them.

Today, troops can print one drone in about 18 hours, according to Sylvia, but the Army is working on speeding up this process.

“Instead of in years, we’re doing it in weeks and months in order to be able to get after the innovation,” Sylvia said. “We actually believe that this is the future. We believe that instead of going back to the enterprise and buying some of these other higher-end UASs that we’ll be able to print these ones ,and that that should be the method that we move to in the future.”

Sylvia said the transforming-in-contact effort is the most significant modernization process he’s seen in his 30-year career. That’s partly because it is user driven and not lab driven.

Under the traditional acquisition model, a requirement would be generated based on a particular need, a system would be developed, it would be tested and then fielded. This process oftentimes was so lengthy that by the time the solution got to the field, it wouldn’t be relevant anymore.

The transforming-in-contact initiative is trying to tighten up that requirements-generation process and allow soldiers to innovate on the battlefield to drive solutions faster.

“What works in a lab with a very technical expert may not necessarily work with a 19-year-old soldier who’s out there in the rain and the mud. We got to figure out how do we do that. We got to get it out there quicker,” Sylvia said.

Program of record or soldier built

While the Army still has program-of-record drones, ranging from the large MQ-1C Gray Eagle that is a division and corps asset to small, medium and long-range reconnaissance systems, lower echelons will need small, attritable systems to conduct line-of-sight reconnaissance and even decoy and deception operations.

The service wants a layered approach, targeting drones that fly at 200 feet and below with a range of 1-10 kilometers for 3D-printed systems.

“I think they also complement each other. As we look at what capability gaps we have as an organization, we can look across and be like, is there a program of record that already exists for us to use this or is this something that we need to look across industry to find a solution to do that? We can do those a lot of times to complement current program record items that already exist in the Army,” Maj. Joshua Kellbach, executive officer for 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st, told reporters on the sidelines of Operation Lethal Eagle, a training event.

Others described how innovation from soldiers can build on programs of record in the field if needed for urgent operations.

2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment was in Europe last year helping to train Ukrainian soldiers. One thing they learned from the Ukrainians was how to build a 3D-printed apparatus for the bottom of a drone to rig a grenade that could be dropped on enemies from above.

“We had a couple of smart guys, one of them happened to be an intelligence lieutenant, one was an engineer, but they just happened to be really smart technical folks and they just figured out how to do it by working out watching YouTube videos,” Lt. Col. Reed Markham, commander of 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, said. “I think that those efforts can complement each other when you got smart soldiers that are just being innovative and coming up with cool ideas and it matches up with new tech.”

Every Soldier a drone operator

Soldiers at Operation Lethal Eagle were conducting drone operator training on a variety of systems.

One such platform was the Black Hornet Soldier Born System, a micro drone program of record used for very short-range ops to see around corners of buildings.

The other was a 3D-printed quadcopter called the Eagle Mav that was just fielded the week prior. It is a company and platoon asset for short-range reconnaissance to make contact with the enemy before soldiers do.

Leaders of the 101st Airborne Division believe that each of its soldiers must be proficient in flying drones, similar to how each member, regardless of military occupational specialty, is trained and proficient on firearms.

“I think of it as like a machine gun … I think of the drones the same way,” Markham said.

“You have people that are your machine gunners, they train with that tool all the time, that weapon all the time, and they’re qualified and they do that. But worst case, every soldier knows how to use a machine gun, so if something happens to that machine gunner, you would still put a different soldier that knows how to use that weapon system on it,” he added. “You’ve got dedicated drone operators that build up the hours and really get good at it, and they’re the person that’s doing the planning and all that kind of stuff and with the leaders to employ it. But then you have other people that are ready to go.”

Officials say the ability to fly drones should be “job agnostic.” As such, they need to be easy to use. The Army doesn’t want to “over-technicalize” these tools, so that forces can quickly learn how to operate them.