FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. – In a small aircraft hangar on the east end of the post, a makeshift obstacle course has been built primarily from leftover construction material such as wood and PVC pipes.

This isn’t an obstacle course for Soldiers to test their fitness or agility. It’s for operators of unmanned aircraft systems, commonly known as drones.

As seen in Ukraine and elsewhere around the world, drones are becoming more prevalent on the modern battlefield. Where once troops and manned vehicles reigned supreme, unmanned systems now perform numerous missions, including direct attacks, surveillance and target acquisition.

The Pennsylvania National Guard has been using drones for more than a decade, primarily for surveillance and reconnaissance. As tactics have changed in places such as Ukraine, Pennsylvania has strived to keep pace. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Nathan Shea, operations officer with the Unmanned Aircraft Systems facility, said he believes unmanned systems will play an even larger role in future warfare.

“Unmanned systems as a whole – whether that be unmanned aircraft, ground, naval, all of the above – are going to be a massive player in shaping future fights and how we fight,” Shea said. “The more we can remove humans from the front lines and direct combat, I think the more you’re going to see that.”

High-stakes training

The UAS facility at Fort Indiantown Gap dates to 2007 and originally housed the RQ-7 Shadow UAS, which the 28th Infantry Division used until January 2024, when the Army stopped using Shadows.

The Shadow was a fixed-wing UAS with a 20-foot wingspan that was designed for surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition, said Shea, who is a member of the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, or SBCT.

Since the Army has not yet fielded a replacement system for the Shadow, the UAS facility is in a transitional phase. Shea and the other Soldiers who work there are experimenting with different kinds of drones, including first-person-view, or FPV, drones.

The obstacle course, built inside a former Shadow hangar, allows FPV drone operators to practice flying.

“It’s a great indoor, all-weather space that we get to utilize, and it focuses on building out tactics,” Shea said. “Every obstacle, as random as they may seem placed, has a very specific purpose. It’s meant to build accuracy for the pilots.”

Earlier this year, Shea returned from a deployment with the 56th SBCT to Germany, where the brigade assumed responsibility of Joint Multinational Training Group – Ukraine, which trains Ukrainian soldiers. His role was to oversee all UAS operations and the UAS training programs for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“We trained these operators from nothing to full-blown drone operators ready to go to war in about 45 days’ time,” Shea said. “It was a very high-stress program. The stakes were very high, and there was very little room for error on either party’s part.”

Shea said he built an obstacle course in Germany similar to the one at the UAS facility to train Ukrainian soldiers, and he plans to build an outdoor training course eventually.

Like other Army units – both active duty and National Guard – Pennsylvania is waiting for funding to build out its UAS capabilities, Shea said. He knows which systems he would like and which are needed to support the different missions.

“There’s no 100 percent answer on a system right now,” Shea said. “What works for the cav [cavalry] is not going to work for the engineers, probably. The advantage is we already tested a lot of these systems, so we know what systems we need, we know what modifications we need to make to those systems to make them fit more warfighting functions.”

‘UAS is the future’

At the 166th Regiment – Regional Training Institute, a U.S. Army schoolhouse on Fort Indiantown Gap that offers numerous courses, instructors are teaching students in several military occupational specialties about drones.

On a recent day, Soldiers from across the Army attending the infantry Advanced Leader Course, or ALC, received a drone familiarization class.

The class was split: half of the Soldiers conducted dismounted infantry operations and infantry tactics, while the other half discussed drone use and what’s happening on the front lines now. While half of the class had those discussions, an instructor used a small quadcopter drone to observe the other half of the class in the nearby woods.

“If we look at the operational environment and the battlefields around the world right now, UAS is the future, and we have to address that fight,” said Sgt. 1st Class Mark Thompson, course manager for the infantry ALC at the 166th Regiment. “These guys are going to be the ones on the front lines, whatever the next major engagement is, so we want them to be able to see drones and experience them for the first time here in a controlled environment, not on the front lines.

“It’s very, very important for them to be able to start encompassing that in the way that they train, the way that they operate,” Thompson added.

Thompson said the 166th Regiment is implementing drones on different fronts. In addition to the familiarization classes, the 1st Battalion also runs the Small Unmanned Aerial System Operator Course, in which students learn drone basics.

The 166th has been using UAS for several years, and the training is constantly evolving as new technologies and new tactics emerge, Thompson said.

“We have a fantastic staff who are all very dedicated to maintaining the most current up-to-date stuff coming off the battlefield right now, whether that be in the European theater or around the world, or down at the border in the United States, how drones are being implemented by friendly and by enemy assets,” Thompson said. “When we get that stuff, we pretty much have a working group as a staff, discuss the positives and negatives, and then we implement it to the students.”

Thompson said UAS familiarization is very important because it gives Soldiers a foundational knowledge base to operate drones efficiently.

“We want them to be able have that foundational knowledge in a training environment so that when they actually go to do it in real world, they are 10 times more proficient because they have that foundational base,” Thompson said.

Drones in the field

Across the Pennsylvania National Guard, Soldiers have increased their use of drones during training throughout the past year.

In August, Soldiers with 1-109th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team – along with Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 107th Field Artillery Regiment and representatives of Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute – used drones and artificial intelligence to make the process of requesting artillery fire less stressful for Soldiers on the battlefield.

The exercise, part of Project Shrike, used a software package developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute in partnership with the U.S. Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center. This artificial intelligence-enabled system enables artillery units to detect, target and engage threats faster and with greater precision. The project reduces the complex task of calling for fire to mere seconds.

“The system highlights targets and recommends firing solutions for operator decision,” said Chad Hershberger, a software engineer with Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute. “The human is in the decision loop in order to accept or reject the system’s recommendation.”

In a similar exercise in November 2024, instructors from the 166th Regiment’s 1st Battalion used quadcopter drones to gather target information and send it to students taking the artillery Advanced Leader Course under the guidance of instructors from the 2nd Battalion. The students then engaged the targets with howitzers.

They also used drones to observe the fall of the artillery rounds, make required adjustments and conduct battle-damage assessments.

“We’ve been seeing it through open-source intelligence, obviously in the conflict that’s going on in Ukraine, that they’ve been doing a lot of these things, so we’re adjusting with the times, and we’re developing procedures and efficiencies in order to conduct these tasks,” said Sgt. 1st Class Richard Hutnik, quality assurance noncommissioned officer for the 1st Battalion who was piloting a drone during the exercise.

Whether on an obstacle course, in a classroom or in a field training environment, the Pennsylvania National Guard is attempting to stay at the forefront of drone tactics and technology as drone usage continually increases on the battlefield.

By Brad Rhen