BASCO, Philippines — A barely detectable speck appears near a beaming, late afternoon sun after which dodges behind a cloud. Soon that small speck, because it makes its slow descent, takes the shape of a sleek, small unmanned aircraft.
The aircraft makes a quiet, delicate landing along the runway of a distant island airfield within the Philippines within the temporarily breezeless, scorching heat. The platform — a Kraus Hamdani Aerospace K1000 — had spent nearly all of the day flying above the South China Sea and collecting data for the Prolonged Range Sensing and Effects Company, which is a component of the U.S. Army’s 1st Multi-Domain Task Force.
Here within the Philippines, the first MDTF is using the Balikatan military exercise to experiment with its structure and discover the assets that can best serve joint and coalition forces in situations where adversaries can deny regional access. The bilateral drill between the American and Philippine armed forces took place April 11-May 9.
The ERSE Company arrange camp in Basco, a volcanic island within the Batanes island chain north of the Philippines’ largest island of Luzon. On a transparent day from certain high points on the island, one can see Taiwan.
The corporate operated out of a small, air-conditioned tent directly next to the tiny industrial airport that hosts just a few flights a day.
The corporate’s position was as far north because the annual exercise ever took place; just one unit is stationed farther north where it’s constructing a warehouse on the island of Itbayat.
Maj. Seth Holt, who commands the ERSE Company, told Defense News, inside his small operations center on Basco, that he was focused on learning how his team can contribute to a versatile and simply tailorable multidomain task force.
His company is designed to supply sensing capability from the bottom level inside the electromagnetic spectrum as much as roughly 100,000 feet, Holt said. The spectrum is a critical resource in modern conflicts, as those answerable for it may possibly manipulate communications, weapons guidance and more.
The corporate is made up of three platoons: one focused on electronic warfare, one other on unmanned aircraft, and one other on high-altitude capabilities corresponding to balloons.
How did troops use the drones?
Contained in the small operations center, soldiers assigned to the corporate watched monitors displaying signals of interest gathered by electronic surveillance.
With one other monitor, soldiers controlled the K1000 and its payload, zooming in on areas of interest and flagging things to observe.
Holt said the corporate, in the course of the exercise, has been capable of pass data from the drone’s sensors and cameras to Philippine troops, a significant step in advancing interoperability between the 2 nations.
While the K1000 isn’t a program of record, the Army has been using it in quite a lot of experiments, including the Edge exercise and Project Convergence.
The lightweight K1000, which features solar panels on its wings, previously broke the endurance record for sophistication 2 unmanned aerial systems by flying for 76 hours. That category currently applies to drones that weigh between 21 and 55 lbs.
After a roughly 8-hour mission tackling the winds at sea, the aircraft returned with 80% of its battery life, operators told Defense News on the Basco site.
The aircraft doesn’t have landing gear and relies on 3D-printed skids that might be swapped out after they wear down.
The K1000 can be difficult to detect, with most sensors and radars mistaking it for a bird, in accordance with Kraus engineers on site.
The aircraft suits inside a regular case, and it takes users roughly 10 minutes to unload, assemble and launch. The drone takes off from a moving vehicle because it catches the wind and becomes airborne. In Basco, it took off from the roof of a black SUV.
Despite its design, nature and physics still get in the best way. Defense News observed the team resolve against launching the aircraft early one morning since the winds were too strong.
Kraus has developed a vertical-takeoff-and-landing version of the fixed-wing aircraft to higher tolerate windy weather and is providing some units to the U.S. Navy for evaluation. But in accordance with Holt, endurance is sacrificed in that configuration due to the energy drained from the electrical motor.
The K1000 isn’t the one UAS, the MDTF is evaluating. One in every of the ERSE Company’s platoons can be conducting non-flight tests of a 3D-printed small, fixed-wing UAS that was inbuilt five days and designed by a soldier at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state — the headquarters of 1st MDTF.
The ERSE company can be experimenting with high-altitude balloons to tackle a further long-endurance sensing layer. One system, also not a program of record, is Urban Sky’s Stratospheric Microballoon, which the firm says produces zero emissions.
High-altitude balloons, which might hold sensors for surveillance, detection and targeting, help the ERSE Company provide networking capabilities and will eventually carry payloads, Holt said. Such platforms are gaining traction because they’re easy to deploy with small units operating in austere locations, Holt noted, and the balloons themselves can prove difficult to detect.
At Balikatan, the ERSE Company sent soldiers accustomed to operating high-altitude balloons to a different site to assist a Philippine civilian agency launch weather balloons, Holt added.
The officer also said what his Pacific-based unit needs most in a UAS capability is something with an ideal deal of range and endurance in addition to a one which soldiers can deploy in large numbers to overwhelm an enemy. Moreover, Holt said, he wants versatility, where payloads might be swapped or configured otherwise for various missions corresponding to surveillance or network extension.
Why did the Army create these teams?
The U.S. Army established the first MDTF in 2018 as an experimental unit meant to tell the service’s Multi-Domain Operations doctrine, which the force ultimately published in 2022. The Army determined the unit’s value to the force went beyond just experiments and decided to create five more multidomain task forces dedicated to specific theaters.
The service has officially created three MDTFs in various stages of construction. The primary has focused on the Indo-Pacific theater since its creation. The second relies in Europe, and the third is in Hawaii. A fourth can even be dedicated to the Pacific. A fifth, which will likely be based at Fort Liberty, South Carolina, doesn’t yet have a dedicated theater.
The duty forces consist of multidomain cells made up off any combination of kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities to incorporate long-range fires battalions, multidomain effects battalions, Indirect Fire Protection Capability battalions and task force support battalions.
At the center of those task forces is the multidomain effects battalions, formerly generally known as the Intelligence, Information, Cyber, Electronic Warfare and Space unit.
The multidomain effects battalions consists of six corporations, of which the ERSE Company is one. The opposite five corporations concentrate on information dominance, space, military intelligence, signals intelligence, and Army headquarters affairs. The businesses are designed to work together and complement one another’s capabilities for sensing and delivering effects on targets.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.