A soldier in the inaugural Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Ala., operates a commercial drone simulator controller in August 2025. (Leslie Herlick/U.S. Army)
Army efforts to field soldiers as adept as adversaries at using drones in combat are taking a detour from the field into the classroom in an effort to standardize operations training on the game-changing aircraft.
The inaugural group of 28 in the Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Ala., has been taking instruction this month to hone a variety of abilities.
“This course is a catch-up,” Capt. Rachel Martin said in an Army statement Monday. “We’re behind globally, and this is our aggressive attempt to close that gap.”
The course director, Martin built the program from the ground up in just 90 days before its launch at the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence.
The soldiers in the three-week course will start by using commercial off-the-shelf drones and simulation software to develop their skills in flying first-person view drones. After 20 to 25 hours of simulator time, they will transition to live flight exercises.
The students will also learn how to make and fix drone components using 3D printing. The course aims to build a centralized repository of print files for them to take back to their units, according to the statement.
“Eventually, we want students to build and test their own FPV bodies,” said Maj. Wolf Amacker, chief of the center’s Directorate of Training and Doctrine UAS and Tactics Branch. “We’re teaching and learning from the force on what’s possible and how to sustain these systems in the field.”
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jakob Stavenau and Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Charm fly drone simulators during the inaugural Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Ala., in August 2025. (Leslie Herlick/U.S. Army)
Soldiers practice flying a small drone at the inaugural Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Ala., Aug. 18, 2025. (Veronica Jordan/U.S. Army)
Performance data on five drone systems will be collected during the course for use in the Army’s procurement and training decisions down the road, the statement said.
Many of the students taking the course are “self-taught hobbyists or informal experts,” according to the statement, adding that the learning they acquire at Fort Rucker will allow them to build drone programs at the unit level.
Although the course is in-person only for the time being, the Army is developing a mobile training package that will allow units to offer it on their own.
Future versions of the course will cover advanced tactics and one-way attacks using first-person view drones.
Proficiency in battlefield drone use is a critical aspect of the revamped Army fighting doctrine known as Transforming in Contact.
Through the initiative, the Army seeks to rapidly field commercial technologies such as drones, electronic warfare systems and advanced communications.
It was launched in 2024 at the brigade level and is expected to run through 2026. Since its inception, Transforming in Contact has advanced to the division level and into Stryker teams.
A similar on-the-fly approach characterized the creation of the Fort Rucker course.
“Most of my peers, including myself until 90 days ago, didn’t know how to do this,” Martin said. “Now we know what it takes, how many people, how much equipment, how much money, and we are sharing this information already with our partners out in the force.”
Soldiers and instructors in the inaugural Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Ala., prepare to launch a small drone during their training at the range on Aug. 18, 2025. (Veronica Jordan/U.S. Army)
A soldier flies a small drone at the range during the inaugural Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Ala., on Aug. 18, 2025. (Veronica Jordan/U.S. Army)
