Elements from the US Army’s 1st Cavalry Division have recently completed a counter-drone live-fire exercise at Fort Hood, Texas. Known as ‘Pegasus Charge’, the exercise was the latest phase of ‘Golden Shield’, the US Army’s initiative to advance “efforts to protect US forces from the growing threat of small unmanned aerial systems” used against manoeuvring armoured formations.

This was the first time that the US Army had demonstrated the use of an autonomous sensor on one vehicle that identified a hostile drone and then communicated data to a remote weapon system that then engaged and destroyed the drone. ‘Pegasus Charge’ comes under the umbrella of the US Army’s Transforming in Contact (TiC) programme, itself an offshoot of its Phantom Experimentation Laboratory (PhantomX) process that as well as CUAS, is experimenting with small UGVs (sUGV), data-centric communications and the integration of the Switchblade 600 loitering munition.

One of the key industry players that is working closely with the US Army is Swarmbotics AI. The company had previously won a contract to provide its FireAnt sUGV platforms as part of an autonomous ground robot swarming trial that the US Army envisages will be integrated with its armoured forces. This concept of using small, relatively cheap, autonomous swarming ground vehicles is an interesting one in that it presents the enemy with an increased number of decisions that have to be taken whilst in contact thereby putting pressure on the C2 process and generating cognitive overload for commanders.

Swarmbotics AI’s FireAnt V4 platform also provided the sensor platform vehicle for the CUAS Golden Shield phase of Pegasus Charge. The Harpe micro-missile that was used to engage the drones has been developed by Perseus Defense and can be fired from its own launcher, specialist vehicles or mounted on a range of US Army vehicles.

“The future is formation-based layered protection, and this is the start of that,” said Alfred Grein, executive director for Research and Technology Integration for the US Army Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM). “Some [of the systems] are more mature than others…but understand that’s part of why we do experiments to determine what we think is ready to hand-off to soldiers in the field.”

The US approach of leveraging industry, academia and its own resources such as DEVCOM to address defence issues are in contrast to many other nations around the world. For example, many military figures in Europe have argued that the emergence of the low-cost FPV drone in Ukraine has nullified the armoured force manoeuvre battle doctrine without seriously addressing countermeasure and counter tactics. As seen with Golden Shield and more widely with PhantomX, the US approach is to push back against this argument and make its armoured formations more resilient and to seek methods to counter new threats.

Europe’s tactical stasis was placed under the spotlight in May 2025 during the NATO exercise, ‘Hedgehog 25’. Held in Estonia, the exercise drew together 16,000 participants from 12 countries to test Estonia’s defensive capabilities. In addition, 10 Ukrainian drone operators were embedded with Estonian forces to provide additional opposing forces (OPFOR). As well as the kinetic and reconnaissance capabilities of the drones, it is understood that the Ukrainians were also using their AI-based Delta digital battlefield management system (BMS) that melds digital maps, multiple drone feeds and satellite imagery to reduce the time between target detection and target engagement. Delta also provides a high level of battlefield situational awareness.

As has been widely reported, initially in The Wall Street Journal, the Ukrainian drone operators successfully ‘destroyed’ 17 armoured vehicles and struck 30 other targets in the first half-day of the exercise. These strikes disabled two battalions. It would appear that NATO forces have not taken onboard the clear lessons coming from the Russo-Ukrainian War and consequently, the alliance is not fully prepared to prevail on the modern battlefield. This lack of preparedness does not necessarily require a recasting of doctrine but taking a leaf out of the US Army’s approach of assessing lessons learned, a wider adoption of experimentation and then working more closely with industry, military research centres and academia to develop workable responses would benefit all concerned. This approach would also help to shorten the procurement cycle and therefore, save money.