A U.S. soldier prepares an M67 grenade for a Skydio X10 drone at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, June 25, 2025. The 173rd Airborne Brigade's Bayonet Innovation Team is developing a variety of drone warfare capabilities for soldiers in the Vicenza, Italy-based unit as well as across the service. (Collin Mackall/U.S. Army)

NAPLES, Italy — U.S. soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade stationed in Italy are taking insights gleaned from their Ukrainian counterparts fighting Russia to shape the Army’s future battlefield capabilities.

That observational and advisory role is directly informing how the 173rd’s Bayonet Innovation Team devises high-tech solutions intended to make missions successful and reduce soldiers’ risks, said 1st Lt. Vincent Gasparri, the team’s director.

The war in Ukraine has given the Army the clearest picture yet of the “tactical opportunities and problems that we would face in the next conflict,” Gasparri said.

Using and defending against drones and robots, artificial intelligence and electromagnetic warfare are among the team’s top objectives, he said.

“Our primary charge is to solve innovation and modernization problems for the brigade,” Gasparri said.

The group’s work is informed by observation of the Russia-Ukraine war and the brigade’s participation in initiatives to arm and train Ukrainian forces.

Sgt. Andy Ortiz of the 173rd Airborne Brigade operates a first-person view drone at Norio Training Area, Georgia, Aug. 2, 2025. The brigade's Bayonet Innovation Team is developing and testing new battlefield capabilities using lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war. (Brittany Conley/U.S. Army)

First Lt. Kadin Peterman, a robotics engineer with the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s Bayonet Innovation Team, holds an unmanned ground vehicle, or ground robot, at the team’s lab as U.S. Army Garrison Italy in Vicenza on Sept. 9, 2025. (Alison Bath/Stars and Stripes)

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Justin Love holds an aerial drone under development by the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s Bayonet Innovation Team on Sept. 9, 2025. In May, Bayonet established a facility capable of building 200 to 300 aerial drones a month at U.S. Army Garrison Italy in Vicenza. (Alison Bath/Stars and Stripes)

Those connections and the resulting relationships have been “key in our development and our understanding of what’s effective,” Gasparri said.

Much of the innovation team’s work focuses on experimenting with and configuring drones and robots, as well as developing the support system needed to train the soldiers who will use them.

The 173rd Airborne is the Army’s contingency response force in Europe. Based in Italy and Germany, it provides rapid forces for U.S. European Command, U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Central Command, according to the Army.

Stood up about two years ago, Bayonet is one of several unit-based Army initiatives designed to rapidly develop and advance technology to support evolving battlefield needs, according to the service.

It is aligned with the Army Transformation Initiative, an effort launched in May that is part of a plan to ready soldiers for future battles where drones, robots and other emerging technology are anticipated to rule.

The initiative builds on the revised Army fighting concept known as Transformation in Contact, an effort to rapidly deliver large amounts of new technology to soldiers so they can experiment and innovate, according to the service.

In May, Bayonet established a facility with the capability to produce 200 to 300 aerial drones a month, chiefly for use in military exercises. This week, the team produced 40 systems over three days.

A group of about 11 soldiers builds the simple, quadcopter drones — inspired by similar one-way attack models employed by Ukraine — using an assembly-line method and a 3D printer in a small lab at U.S. Army Garrison Italy in Vicenza.

The drones are powered by a lithium polymer battery and cost roughly $1,000 to $1,500 to design, build and operate, Gasparri said.

They can carry an explosive payload capable of destroying a tank, he said, adding that the technology is a “considerable advancement.”

The unit also has been prototyping similar systems in Germany since November 2024, the Army said.  

In addition, Bayonet is researching and experimenting with counter-drone systems that can detect and defeat an adversary’s unmanned aerial vehicles as well as ground robots.

For 1st Lt. Kadin Peterman, Bayonet’s experimentation with the robots has a deep, personal connection. He previously led a platoon of sappers, or combat engineers, and said the robots can remove some of the danger inherent in that job.

“We can send explosives up to the breach without sending a person and still conduct our engineer task,” Peterman said, adding that making sure troops “stay alive as long as possible” keeps him invested in the work.

Gasparri said other areas of study and experimentation for Bayonet include leveraging AI on the battlefield to quickly offer up-to-date analysis.

For example, future battle formations could be supported by as many as 300 drones taking videos analyzed by AI and verified by just a handful of soldiers, reducing time and manpower while increasing efficiency, he said.

The team also is experimenting with using multiple drones, called wolf packs, for defending against and destroying an enemy’s air-to-air missile system.

That work will bolster the brigade’s ability to deploy anywhere, control the airspace and protect its formation with portable systems that can be thrown out of planes, dropped out of helicopters or put on a soldier to protect them, Gasparri said.