Two small unmanned aircraft systems, also known as “drones,” are set up for use during Exercise NEXUS FORGE, Feb. 5, 2025, at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. (Jeffrey Grossi/U.S. Air Force)
(Tribune News Service) — Soldiers at Oahu’s Schofield Barracks have been making drones a more central part of how they operate, both in Hawaii and in operations across the Pacific.
The widespread use of robotics in warfare was once regarded as the stuff of science fiction. But as technology — and the way fighters use it — changes battlefields across the globe, science fiction is becoming a reality and drones are now a fact of life for soldiers in Hawaii.
“They’re using drones that we built here on 3D printers, ” said 25th Infantry Division Command Sgt. Maj. Shaun Curry. “Soldiers now can 3D print and create a drone body as long as you get the rotors and the cameras and the circuit boards, we now have soldiers that can program drones, they can fly them, it’s all the changing face of the battlefield like we’re watching in the Ukraine-Russia war right now.”
Drones have been used for surveillance and fighting by everyone from Ukrainian and Russian forces, Houthi militants, Mexican cartels and others. The drones range from relatively cheap “off the shelf ” commercial drones to highly sophisticated machines developed by tech companies around the world.
Soldiers around the world now have their eyes to the skies. And on April 15 the Philippine navy announced that it had concluded that mysterious underwater drones that had been found by Filipino fishermen likely came from China and were being used to spy in Philippine waters and map the area for submarine operations. Military commanders — as well as drone companies — are starting to look at the Pacific.
“It’s gonna be the drone wars, ” said Stan Nowak, an executive for drone company Red Cat. “You have some drones that are gonna be counter (remote controlled air systems) for taking out other drones, and the other drones are gonna be coming in and delivering stuff while all of us are in the rear, you know, hopefully out of harm’s way. I mean, that’s really where it’s going.”
The 25th Infantry Division has been fielding Red Cat’s drones, and the company has wider plans in the Pacific.
In May the company had a booth at the annual Land Forces Pacific Symposium in Waikiki. Nowak said “we’ve already started building in-country reps throughout all of Asia-Pacific. Korea is a big one ; Japan ; I know we’re already speaking with the Philippines. We’re already speaking directly with Taiwan even. So we’re starting to build that kind of network out there.”
Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, said that “the fielding of our medium range reconnaissance and our long-range reconnaissance drones has occurred ” and that they have played a key role in exercises in the Philippines. The 25th brought drones for the annual Balikatan and Salaknib exercises over the last three months.
Among the systems the 25th has been fielding is Red Cat’s new Black Widow drone system.
Nowak said that Red Cat has taken an approach toward the Black Widows of making them as cheap, easy to fix and as customizable as they can. That stands in contrast with other defense contractors that have sought to make their equipment only work with other components and software they develop to obtain larger contracts with the military — as well as ongoing technical and maintenance support on products they sell.
“Some of those reasons why they liked ours versus the other ones is the field repair, ” Nowak said. “With field repairability of its competitors, if it falls out of the sky, takes a hard landing, you basically have to ship it back to the company. For us, we purposely designed it so that the war fighter could fix it out in the field.”
Nowak described the drone as being configured like a “flying cellphone, ” that can have different software applications installed on it to suit what its user wants. He explained “that way, we can focus on what we do best, and then we partner with other companies that do AI target recognition, 3D mapping, all of those things … so the customer then can dictate, ‘OK yes, I would like an a la carte menu of this, this, this and this’ based on their mission.”
But while the Black Widow is less pricey than many of its competitors, it’s still not cheap — one of them costs about $30, 000.
Many cheap commercial drones already have been used to deadly effect on battlefields. In Iraq and Syria, Islamic State militants modified small drones to drop explosives and used them to spy. This has only escalated in Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces have rigged drones worth a few hundred dollars with explosives and used them to take out Russian tanks that cost millions.
Currently, Chinese drone giant DJI has dominated the drone market globally. Its drones are cheap and have a reputation for generally being reliable and easy to use. As of 2024 it accounted for over 90 % of the world’s consumer drone market, being used for everything from photography and surveillance, as well as for spraying pesticides and carrying packages and mail.
They also have been used around the world by police forces, militaries and terrorist groups — though the company said it seeks to crack down on the latter.
“A lot of this ties into a much larger story of the United States boosting our U.S. industrial base when it comes to drone technology, ” Nowak said. “DJI dominated the market. It still dominates the market to this day. DJI is obviously a Chinese company, and it’s also subsidized by the Chinese government, right ? And so they’re able to sell their drones, actually at a loss, because they don’t care. They wanted to dominate the market.”
In a blog post last year for MIT Technology Review, tech journalist Zeyi Yang wrote that “this reliance on one Chinese company and the supply chain behind it is what worries U.S. politicians, but the danger would be more pronounced in any conflict between China and Taiwan, a prospect that is a huge security concern in the US and globally.”
U.S. officials have said there is some evidence that the Chinese government may sometimes be able to tap into the camera feeds of Chinese-made drones or remotely disable some components at critical times. Contractors seeking to build drones for the U.S. military market themselves as making “blue force ” drones — those without Chinese components, chips or software.
Evans said that in the Philippines, the 25th deployed its 3D printing equipment to the Philippines this year for exercises. He said that has allowed his troops to “manufacture repair parts for different systems, whether it’s mobility systems, fire support systems. We have also focused 3D printing on making first-person viewer drones.”
He also said that the unit has been working on how it will shoot down enemy drones.
Evans said “we have made great strides, and we have got updated counter (drone) capability that expands our reach capability to understand early warning networks. So as an example, we can see out further than we could see in October, to be able to trigger and say, ‘Hey, there’s an unmanned aerial system that’s coming in that is not friendly, ’ to allow us to take actions.”
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