3rd CAB Centers on Drone-Supported Missions as Service Cuts Nearly 6,500 Positions

The Army’s 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade is running with the service’s push to boost drone integration by pairing Apaches, Black Hawks, and Chinooks with small unmanned aircraft to handle reconnaissance, route surveillance, and other jobs that used to rely on pilots squinting out the window.

One of the bigger shifts is happening in the field workshops. Soldiers at Hunter Army Airfield recently trained on the Expeditionary Manufacturing Cell: a deployable 3D-printing system that lets crews produce drone parts on demand. They printed more than 90 components in a few hours rather than praying for replacements to trickle down the supply chain. UAS operators, repairers, and trades specialists then pushed the components straight into first-person-view drones, moving from fabrication to flight testing in the same training cycle.

"Today's battlefield is adapting rapidly. By teaching our soldiers to understand how drones work and are built, we are giving them the skills to think creatively and apply emerging technologies to enhance mission effectiveness and readiness," said Staff Sgt. Christian Dodson, the HAAF Innovation noncommissioned officer in charge.

The brigade isn’t swapping out its helicopters anytime soon, however. The core aircraft still carry the mission load, with Apaches on strikes, Black Hawks on medevac and assaults, and Chinooks on transporting the heavy stuff. What’s changing is how these aircraft enter the fight. Unmanned teams scout landing zones, target air-defense threats, and provide a live video feed that shortens the time between spotting a threat and hitting it.

Ukraine’s war has served as a long-running case study for the 3rd CAB’s transition. Ukrainian forces have used low-cost drones to hit Russian refineries up to 2,000 kilometers away, and Russia has responded with mass drone waves of up to 267 at once. The brigade is applying these strategies to its own operations, practicing smaller command nodes, tighter emission control, and decoys to reduce the thermal and acoustic signatures that make aircraft easy to find.

This push comes as the Army prepares to drop nearly thousands of aviation positions. Currently, about 30,000 soldiers serve in aviation roles, but by the time the cuts are finished, roughly one in five of those positions will be gone.

“The Army is transforming aviation to meet future operational demands — faster, leaner, and more capable," explained Army spokesman Maj. Montrell Russell. “This initiative ensures Army aviation is integrated across components, modernized in capability, and optimized for global mission requirements.”

FMI: www.army.mil