Deceive

For more than a year, U.S. Army forces in Europe have been experimenting with new counter-drone capabilities, as well as tactics, techniques, and procedures to go with them, under the umbrella of what is dubbed Project Flytrap. In doing so, the service has also been gaining valuable new insights into how uncrewed systems can help shape the battlefield for friendly forces. It is particularly interesting to hear how the Army envisions using uncrewed platforms to open up new avenues for deceiving opponents.

Army Col. Timothy Price, head of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, discussed the use of uncrewed platforms for deception and other operational concepts that have emerged in the course of Project Flytrap during a talk yesterday. Price’s remarks came at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention, at which TWZ is in attendance. 2nd Cavalry Regiment, based in Germany, is a brigade-sized mechanized formation equipped primarily with variants of the Stryker 8×8 light armored vehicle.

Price, by way of introduction, described modern battlefields full of uncrewed platforms in the air and on the ground as presenting new twists on long-standing problem sets. More specifically, he started by describing the typical approach to getting past a minefield or similar obstacle using an established framework called SOSRA, which stands for Suppress, Obscure, Secure, Reduce, Assault.

“If we were going to breach a mined wire obstacle, the first step of SOSRA – suppress – would be the utilization of indirect fires, to get the enemy’s head down, and direct fire systems, so they would not maneuver on you, fix them in place, and you can make a decision about how you’re going to approach the problem,” the 2nd Cavalry Regiment commander explained. “The next step would be to obscure it. In the historical sense, obscurations used is [sic] smoke, to mask your movement to the point of breach, so the enemy doesn’t know what you’re doing. And then, of course, secure would be to establish frontside security, [and] allow your engineers to come up within this local security bubble. They’ll utilize some kind of line charge to open the breach, reduce it – that’s the ‘R’ – and then bring on a follow-on force of assault through.”

“We were brought up around the old traditional mined wire obstacles that we had to physically breach. This is no different,” he added. “It’s just a multi-domain environment. So it’s built up of a combination of electronic warfare, kinetic UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] threats, and then counter-UAS threats, and then the network that holds [that all] together that forms the obstacle, which a unit has to maneuver through in order to maintain the offensive.”

Within this environment, Col. Price described the suppression step of SOSRA as having a different kind of probing dimension, particularly to feel out an enemy’s uncrewed capabilities, as well as those in the electromagnetic spectrum. He also noted that brigade-sized formations like this no longer necessarily have all the required tools organizationally to ‘service’ that aspect of the mission. This is in part because what has to be suppressed, including ground control stations for enemy drones, might now be miles behind the front line.

So, “what we have to do is allow the enemy to turn on their systems. How do I suppress them to allow division, or higher, to put an effect on them for suppression? It probably looks like flying small, attritable UAS [sic] into their security area” in the rear, he said. This, in turn, “cause[s] the enemy to do one of two things, either … go from passive to active with their EW [electronic warfare] systems, or to turn on radars to actually figure out what they’re seeing, which then forms the signature which higher headquarters can use to target.”

Though Col. Price did not describe it as such, there is already something of a deception aspect to this step in fooling enemy emitters to switch on and expose themselves. This, as a general tactic, is also hardly new. Stimulating air defenses, in particular, is a key part of operations to gather intelligence on those capabilities, as well as to suppress and destroy them. Once you have categorized and geolocated an emitter, it is a logical step to then target it. The ultimate goal, with data being passed along a more deeply networked kill chain, is for the time it takes for fires to be brought to bear to be almost instantaneous.

Regardless, deception comes far more into play in the obscure step, according to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment commander.

“Obscuration is different, as well. So instead of trying to hide behind smoke as we maneuver through it, what is the deception plan, right? How am I trying to show the enemy a signature that says I’m going to breach over here when I’m actually going to breach here, right?” he asked rhetorically. “So, that’s probably the implementation of UGVs [uncrewed ground vehicles] with some kind of decoy emitter on top of them to pull the enemy’s eyes, resources, and time to a point that allows me to focus my assets and resources on the point of breach.”

The use of uncrewed platforms as decoys is also not new, and even more complex concepts have emerged within the U.S. military in the past. Uncrewed systems have also been developed for military and other purposes over the years that are designed to mimic something else entirely, including for purposes of deception. This includes masquerading as birds and other animals.

Back in 2019, TWZ was the first to report in detail on a Navy effort to develop and field an entire networked, cooperative electronic warfare ecosystem, at that time referred to as the Netted Emulation of Multi-Element Signature against Integrated Sensors, or NEMESIS. This was also a drone-heavy cross-domain concept intended to make many types of sensors over vast areas believe they were ‘seeing’ the same false fleets of aircraft and/or ships, and deceive and confuse the enemy on a grand scale. This, in turn, represented a massive leap in electronic warfare capabilities.

There is also overlap here with reported sightings of what are now commonly called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and that used to be called unidentified flying objects (UFO). As we have reported on repeatedly over the years, while some UAP sightings remain unexplained, many more have turned out to be drones. Adversaries have been using uncrewed capabilities for intelligence gathering and deception purposes against American interests at home and abroad, likely in part by exploiting UAP stigma for cover. We have talked in the past about how drones will be used in more and more exotic ways to confuse opponents.

When it comes to UGVs, specifically, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, as well as units elsewhere across the U.S. Army, have been experimenting with various designs in recent years. The service has been trying for years to expand its operational use of UGVs, in general, but has faced repeated setbacks.

“It’s also spectral camouflage. So how are we controlling our heat and thermal signatures on our vehicles and our people?” Price continued. “It’s basic soldier discipline issues. It’s how we use our radios. It’s where we’re talking, where we’re not. But that’s what obscuration looks like.”

As a reminder, Project Flytrap’s primary focus has been on counter-drone capabilities, which come into play heavily during the secure stage.

“There’s multi-layered assets on top of that to allow that convergence for our success at the point of breach. I’m going to focus on our corner, our part of the battle, right?” he said. “So, I’m looking at active and passive electronic warfare systems – that can either, one, find [threats], let me know that I’ve got some kind of system flying or operating against me and, then, if it’s an active system, take some kind of effect to maybe cut a downlink and disrupt that system – all the way down to the individual soldier with a shotgun.”

As mentioned, the ‘obstacle’ to be ‘reduced’ at the end of this is not necessarily something as simple as a minefield surrounded by barbed wire anymore. Now it could be enemy one-way-attack drone capabilities preventing holding up an advance. Col. Price, in turn, described friendly kamikaze drones as part of the equation for breaching past those threats. Decoys and deception have a continued role to play in this phase.

“This is where, at the brigade level, we introduce one-way attack munitions to try to destroy the C2 [command and control] network that the enemy is using to operate this reconnaissance/strike complex” that is standing in the way, he explained. “There’s layers to it, right? Like they’ve got a close side to this that’s the local part of this reconnaissance/strike complex. They’ve probably got a theater level that the Corps [the U.S. Army’s command echelon above divisions] and higher is trying to target as we are forcing people to turn on systems to communicate. But at the regiment level, I’m looking at one-way attack munitions, focused on C2 nodes, headquarters, and ground control stations that [sic] I can disrupt their ability to put lethal effects on me as we begin to open the breach.”

The U.S. Army is in the process of fielding a variety of weaponized drones, including loitering munitions and designs capable of releasing grenades and other small bomblets.

During a question-and-answer session that followed his remarks, Col. Price was asked about whether lessons learned and other observations from Ukraine, and specifically that country’s recent Operation Vivaldi counteroffensive, had contributed to this evolving framework.

“In terms of Vivaldi, I’m not an expert, so I’m not going to make any kind of estimations on how that worked or why,” he said in response. “But I will say, if you look at the focus of that operation, you can probably make the assumption that there was convergence of efforts across the different headquarters to enable success. So that’s how I would relate to the two.”

“In order to be successful for a multi-domain breach, the tactical level requires my higher headquarters to be part of that solution to enable me with resources and capabilities that I don’t have in here at the brigade level,” he continued. “I would imagine it’s very similar in the other operational comparisons.”

Though certainly true, in broad strokes, this response in some ways underscores how the U.S. Army continues to lag behind global trends in the use of uncrewed systems, as now typified by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Army leaders have been open about this continued reality in the past, despite efforts to try to reverse it.

“We’re behind. I’ll just be candid. I think we know we’re behind,” Army Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza said during a panel discussion at AUSA last year, in response to a direct question at the panel from our Howard Altman. Costanza was talking about both the employment of drones and counter-drone capabilities, and highlighted work being done then under Project Flytrap, as you can read more about here.

Costanza was head of V Corps, a key component of the U.S. Army presence in Europe, at the time. He was removed from that post abruptly in August for reasons that remain unclear, but were reportedly tied to disputes between top Army leadership and Secretary Pete Hegseth. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll resigned last month, amid reports of months of friction with Hegseth about various policies.

The Pentagon under Hegseth has launched a number of initiatives to accelerate the fielding of new uncrewed capabilities across the U.S. military, especially within smaller ground units. This now includes plans for a new Autonomous Warfare Command (AUTOWARCOM) unveiled last month.

For units like the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, new drone-centric concepts of operations are already taking shape. Beyond using them for surveillance and as one-way-attack munitions, there is also a clear focus emerging on employing expanding uncrewed capabilities to deceive opponents and prevent them from making the best use of their own resources.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com