Army Capt. Weston Graves prepares to catch a small aerial drone during the second day of the service’s new Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics course on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Maneuver Innovation Lab on Fort Benning, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
FORT BENNING, Ga. — An instructor moved a tiny drone upside down then rapidly back and forth by hand as Army Sgt. 1st Class William Benz peered through his goggles to see what the drone could see.
“It makes me nauseous,” the 16-year cavalry scout and veteran of the Afghanistan War said Tuesday, grinning as he passed the goggles to the next student in a new class at Fort Benning, Ga., designed to provide Army combat unit leaders with a better understanding of the latest drone and robotics capabilities available to them.
Benz is one of 12 students participating in the first edition of the Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics course, or RASLT, at Fort Benning’s Maneuver Center of Excellence. The new class began Monday.
Capt. Allison Darby, an armor officer who is directing the new program, said RASLT is meant to provide Army leaders — the class is open to sergeants first class and higher-ranked soldiers — a familiarity with the ground robots, aerial drones and the autonomous capabilities the service is building into its key combat formations through its Transformation in Contact initiative. The three-week class is not designed to make them expert operators, but it should give them the confidence to build well-planned operations incorporating these latest pieces of technology, she said.
Army Sgt. 1st Class William Benz looks at a first-person-view one-way attack drone during the second day of the service’s new Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Maneuver Innovation Lab on Fort Benning, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Most of the students are recently promoted captains who have finished the Maneuver Captain’s Career Course at Fort Benning, and will go on to command infantry, armor or cavalry companies, Darby said.
“They have to understand the capabilities, [and] they have to understand the limitations to be able to plan for it,” Darby said Tuesday as her students entered their second day of the course. “Ultimately, the inner workings of these systems is on the operator … but these are very hard to operate. So, we want [the students] … to be cognizant of that, so they can be a lot more understanding that when you’re tasking your soldiers and those crews to do something … you’re not going to task them with something that’s not a capability.”
The class should help “bridge the gap” between mid-career and later soldiers who have not learned about drones and autonomous robotics since Day 1 in the Army with the newest soldiers who have been trained on such capabilities since shortly after joining, she said.
Students are spending the first week on the basics of robotics and autonomous systems, during the second week they will learn to prepare a defensive operation using those capabilities, and in the third week they will plan an offensive attack with them, Darby said. They will also learn about the ethics involved in using autonomous systems on the battlefield and human-robot teambuilding, Darby said.
Benz, who will serve as a scout leader course instructor at Fort Benning after completing RASLT, said he was a longtime skeptic of the integration of drones and robots into the Army’s small combat units. But he now wishes those capabilities were available to him when he first deployed to Afghanistan as a scout in 2010 with the 4th Infantry Division.
“This would have made life a lot easier,” Benz said. “The little drones … going over the little dunes and mountains and stuff to catch all the bad guys in the rat trails. That would have been awesome.”
Army 2nd Lt. Dallas McAllister shows a first-person-view one-way attack drone to students of the service’s new Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Maneuver Innovation Lab on Fort Benning, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Students take turns operating an Army unmanned ground vehicle inside the Maneuver Innovation Lab on Fort Benning, Ga., during the second day of the service’s new Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics course on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
A student in the Army’s new Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics course tries on goggles for a first-person-view attack drone on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, on Fort Benning, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
He took the class to get a better understanding of how to train other cavalry scouts to use them for their primary mission — finding the enemy on the battlefield.
“I’m looking at this through that recon lens,” he said. “Drone, [first-person view] drones, all that is a huge, huge, huge advantage for us.”
But they are only tools, Benz said. They cannot replace humans entirely, even in the reconnaissance world.
“Nothing will ever replace a guy on an [observation point] with a little optic and a radio,” Benz said. “This will enable us and multiply our capability, but we can’t ever forget the analog skills, (and the) human aspect — war is terrible. It’s meant to be terrible. But having these tools to minimize risk to the force is huge. It’s just kind of a balancing act.”
Darby said the pilot program will run three classes in fiscal year 2026. She hopes to expand the classes to 18 students next year.
“We’re going to take the feedback and continue to learn, and the next course will be even better. And then (by) taking the feedback from the second one, the third course will be even better,” Darby said. “We’re able to transform here as doctrine transforms, and we’re going to constantly evolve to try to keep on that forward edge so that this course will stay relevant for as long as it needs to.”
Students and cadre watch a small aerial drone controlled by a phone fly inside the Maneuver Innovation Lab on Fort Benning, Ga., during the second day of the service’s new Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics course on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
