The United States has practiced a large-scale airborne operation, conducting an air assault involving the 101st Airborne Division and other army units.

The military maneuvers took place between February 19 and March 10 during this year’s Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Army Times reports.

“That 21-day division-level exercise gave us the opportunity to take a little more than 7,000 of our soldiers into the field,” Col. Travis McIntosh, the division’s deputy commander, reported. In addition to the 101st Division, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force also took part in the operation.

The Colonel shared that the key part of the exercise, an air assault operation, involved 1,100 soldiers who attacked the designated area in three separate assault teams, which landed with the help of 34 helicopters.

The main striking force of the division was the 1st Brigade Combat Team (one of the three combat brigades of the unit). In addition, they were supported by the 302nd Divisional Reconnaissance Battalion, the 21st Divisional Communications Battalion, and the 326th Divisional Engineer Battalion, which had been formed several months before the operation and were thus to coordinate.

The three battalions worked with their respective assets – intelligence, communications, and engineers – as if they were supporting an entire division’s work.

The Geronimo group countered the division’s strike teams, which played the role of the enemy. They used drones and other modern technology to mimic tactics seen in the Russia-Ukraine war, McIntosh noted.

Using the new tactics turned some of the exercises into “hide-and-seek” exercises for command posts on both sides – the first one spotted was usually the first to be hit and usually considered completely destroyed.

In the photos published during the operation, M142 HIMARS of the 1st Marine Division can be seen, which suggests that the “opposition forces” were using a combination of reconnaissance UAVs and missile systems.

According to McIntosh, the 101st Division requested support from the 61st Airlift Squadron, which operates C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft, to deploy 1,100 paratroopers, their equipment and vehicles, as well as escort units to the area of operation.

The involvement of transport aircraft was made to establish cooperation with the expectation that in real combat operations, the 101st Division would be based at partner country bases or as part of expeditionary forces and, therefore, would directly depend on air logistics and air support.

Testing new technologies

To support the work of the units, the 101st Division deployed 3D printing of spare parts for drones and experiments with new drones, eventually creating and launching 105 unmanned aerial vehicles during the exercises.

However, these flights were not without problems. The Colonel noted that 8 to 12 drones crashed at one point, but after quick maintenance, they were back in service within 24 hours. According to McIntosh, the soldiers will use the lessons learned from the drone crash to build a better version of their Eagle 2.0 drone for the next exercise.

Militarnyi discussed the printing of drones in the US military in the article “The 101st Airborne Division of the United States has launched the production of its own drones”.