Ukrainian Drone Teams Wiped Out a US Armor Brigade in War Games, and the Pentagon Just Sent Poland Through the Same Ukraine Playbook

Since Ukrainian drone teams handed a US Army armored brigade a decisive loss during the Combined Resolve exercise at Hohenfels, Germany, this spring, the Pentagon has kept running NATO forces through the same training ground to relearn drone warfare the hard way. Polish special forces just became the latest to go through it.

The Wall Street Journal reported that during Combined Resolve at Hohenfels in April and May, about 3,500 American troops from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, rotating in from Fort Hood, Texas, were tasked with attacking a defended position. Ukrainian operators from the 412th Regiment of Unmanned Systems Forces, nicknamed Nemesis, reinforced the opposing side. According to people familiar with the exercise cited by the Journal and reported by the Daily Wire, the Ukrainians eliminated the entire American brigade so quickly that fresh US units had to be rotated in just to keep the training going.

The reason was simple. American armored vehicles kicked up dust and stood out to Ukrainian reconnaissance drones, which were followed by explosive-dropping drones and first-person-view kamikaze drones. Live ammunition isn't used in these drills; a drone hovering over or striking a vehicle earns a "kill" from an observer. An Army official told the Journal that newer Mobile Brigade Combat Teams equipped with updated gear and tactics have performed far better in similar exercises, and the rotating Fort Hood unit improved over the two-week drill as it learned to disperse, hide, and use electronic warfare more effectively. Midway through, the Ukrainians switched sides and coached the Americans on using drones offensively.

Polish special forces this month became the first NATO ally other than the United States to run through a separate exercise at the same Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels. The drill was originally designed by Army Green Berets and simulates infiltration behind enemy lines and a drone strike on a key target. An Army officer overseeing the training told the AP the exercise deliberately replicates "all of those effects that we're seeing either Russia or Ukraine having to overcome." It has only been run twice before, both times this year, on the 1,100-square-mile training ground roughly an hour southeast of Nuremberg.

A senior enlisted soldier familiar with the program told the AP the plan is to run it several times a year and that most, if not all, of NATO's 32 member nations are expected to want a turn. This expansion comes even as the Trump administration has signaled possible troop drawdowns in Europe, a tension the AP flagged directly in its reporting.

The timing lines up with a broader run of US signaling toward Moscow. CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow to warn Russia against attacking NATO countries, according to the Wall Street Journal. Three Western officials told the AP on condition of anonymity that they believe Russia has the appetite for sabotage and cyberattacks against NATO members but that Vladimir Putin wants to avoid direct military confrontation with the alliance. That assessment is a judgment call by unnamed officials, not a settled fact, and it sits alongside Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk's warning, reported by Fox News, that Warsaw is "preparing for war, hoping that it never happens." The Polish Embassy in Washington told Fox News its accelerated defense buildup, now near 5% of GDP, is meant to deter aggression, not signal war is inevitable.

The drone-warfare retooling isn't confined to Europe. The US and South Korea ran the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise from Aug. 17 to Aug. 27, involving roughly 18,000 South Korean personnel and forces from 16 other UN Command member states, according to a joint statement reported by the Epoch Times. The drills incorporated countering drone attacks, GPS disruption, and cyberattacks. Col. Jang Do-young of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the goal was strengthening "total national war" readiness by linking military drills with government-wide wartime preparedness. An American officer involved in planning told the Epoch Times that North Korean soldiers who fought alongside Russia in Ukraine brought drone and electronic-warfare lessons back to Pyongyang, changing what South Korea and the US now train against.

War games aren't the battlefield. Live ammunition, real casualties, and unpredictable terrain change the calculus, and the Army's own officials point out that newer, better-equipped brigades already perform better against drone threats than the unit that got mauled at Hohenfels in the spring. Whether that improvement scales fast enough across the whole force, and whether Poland's new drone-strike drill becomes standard training for all 32 NATO members as officials expect, remains to be seen. The next test comes whenever the exercise runs again, expected multiple times a year at Hohenfels.