The American Bradley fighting vehicles were visible on the horizon as they raced toward the city. Smoke, deployed to conceal movement, formed wisps around the outskirts. Assault troops, preparing to storm the enemy stronghold, massed on the northern edge, navigating barbed wire, cars and concrete blocks – enemy obstacles intended to slow the attack.
The urban attack, part of a simulated conflict against a formidable opponent, followed days of fighting.
The US Army exercise tested soldiers as they moved through a city embroiled in conflict, forcing them to evacuate streets and buildings while fighting. The fight also had another layer. Although not on a large scale as the fighters in Ukraine do, soldiers integrated new technologies, including drones and software, to determine if these systems made a difference in the way they saw, felt and attacked the enemy.
However, traditional war skills remain central to combat operations.
At the Capstone of the Army Convergence Project This summer’s exercise at Fort Irwin, California, brought together nearly 10,000 soldiers to experiment with new weapons and technology while fighting a mock war. The enemy forces consisted of troops from Irwin’s 11th Armored Regiment, known as “Blackhorse”.
Across the hot, dusty Mojave Desert, soldiers struggled with the effects of the heat on themselves and their equipment.
Troops systematically cleared parts of the city and made their way to key locations. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. William Rogers
Just over an hour before the assault troops entered the training city, Blackhorse drones flew above and explored the area.
Inside one building, a unit commander asked a drone operator flying a Black Widow quadcopter to use it to assess vehicles entering the city. The drone could fly up to four kilometers, giving the unit visibility beyond what soldiers could see from the ground.
“With my UAS I can find [uncrewed aerial system]I can solve it with burning, and then I’ll end up with my AT [anti-tank] weapons systems,” Captain Mohamed Elmaola of the 4th Infantry Division told Business Insider.
Although remotely piloted unmanned aircraft proved beneficial for early surveillance operations, they were used only sparingly once the fighting entered the city, occasionally flying overhead to recon positions, terrain, and movements. Soldiers said the use cases for the drones had changed as the exercise progressed, with the focus shifting to the fight on the ground.
A ground robotan unmanned ground vehicle called the NOMAD had been deployed outside the city limits earlier that morning but was not used in the attack.
“What we really want to be able to do is not just saturate the environment with a bunch of technology,” because “that becomes so distracting” that soldiers can’t train efficiently and effectively, Brigadier General. Gen. Daniel Hibner, head of the Army Joint Modernization Command, told Business Insider.
The mock city, which the army calls Razish, was vast, with winding streets, buildings of varying heights, underground tunnels and hidden positions. During the training exercise, two key objectives for the assault forces were the prison and a large palace in the center of the city.
Soldiers positioned themselves everywhere, from roofs providing cover to alleys and windows. U.S. Army photo by Pvt. Philip Banaszak
As the two opposing forces clashed in the training city, troops disembarked from their combat vehicles and began checking buildings for enemies. Dismounted infantry and Bradley crews work together in battle, protecting each other as they advance.
Bradleys equipped with heavier weapons tackle threats further away, while soldiers on foot armed for close-quarters combat clear buildings and eliminate threats to nearby vehicles.
“You don’t want your Bradleys to be faster than your dismounted infantry,” one soldier told Business Insider, explaining that dismounted enemy forces armed with anti-vehicle weapons will “just shoot your Bradley.”
Enemy forces hid in alleys and on the top floors of buildings, occasionally firing at a gunman on top of a Bradley vehicle or a dismounted soldier running down the street. At one point, enemy forces successfully hit a Bradley. The turret shot up, indicating the vehicle had been destroyed. In many ways, this type of fighting would not have been unfamiliar to veterans of the Global War on Terror.
The sounds of fighting came in waves, loudest as the assault troops entered the prison and palace. Even during quieter moments, gunshots could be heard in the distance.
Soldiers stationed on rooftops or in windows peered up, aimed and fired their weapons before diving back down. If they were ‘killed’, soldiers would stop fighting and sit or stand where they were.
Hours after the battle for the city, some assault troops gathered inside and next to a low building across the street from the gate surrounding the palace. They assessed whether they had enough ammunition to continue fighting.
One asked where they were and if there were any friendly forces in the area. Another opened his End-user devicea smartphone mounted to his chest, and checked a map while reading the building number out loud.
The urban assault was a culmination of both soldiers’ training and testing of new technologies. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. William Rogers
The soldier used the army prototype Next generation command and controlor NGC2, a software and artificial intelligence-enabled battlefield network.
At Project Convergence Capstone, troops examined how NGC2 performed in a large-scale combat scenario, marking the latest in a series of tests. Previous testing had taken place at Fort Carson, Colorado, where the Army’s 4th Infantry Division developed NGC2 with industry partners.
One soldier said he used NGC2 to see where friendly forces were in the city and where enemy forces might be hiding. Another soldier said connectivity issues, either problems with the NGC2 system or the result of electronic warfare and jamming, had rendered it largely unusable.
That mix of success and failure was exactly what Army leaders said they wanted to see in the exercise, characterizing it as an opportunity Unpleasant collect feedback about what worked and what didn’t.
“We’re going to see some failures here in the desert, and that’s okay,” Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said days after the exercise ended. “If there’s anything here that doesn’t live up to what’s advertised, we’ll walk away from it.”
The city attack showed both the benefits and the challenges of training while experimenting with new technology.
Soldiers had to answer big questions about whether experimental systems were actually useful, while still being judged on basic principles such as whether they cleared or marked buildings properly.
The training environment gave the military a demanding place to test new technology, but the experiments also gave soldiers one more thing to deal with as they tried to win a battle.
