The U.S. Army is disbanding its drone battalion in Europe. The reason is unusual

The U.S. Army is disbanding a battalion that was created in Europe precisely to learn from the drone war in Ukraine. Roughly six hundred soldiers will, after a major exercise in Germany, return to what they were before — airborne infantry. The move is attributed to a general who took office after two commanders lost their posts this year. And they were the very people who pushed the unit through. CBS News ↗

The battalion that was meant to transfer Ukrainian lessons into the U.S. Army

• 22.08.Defense News adds who actually tasked the unit and when: it was U.S. Army Europe and Africa headquarters back in November 2025. The infantry formation was supposed to study how units built expressly around drones operate — including Ukrainian ones — and build that experience into the development of the branch. The formal creation in January, reported by the WSJ, therefore came only after this tasking Portfolio ↗.
• 22.08.The exercise after which the battalion will return to airborne tasks has a name: Saber Junction. An official speaking on background confirmed this to Defense News. The army did not disclose the unit’s designation or the number of soldiers involved — and it also did not disclose why the drone specialization is ending. Portfolio sums it up by saying that, “for now,” this is the termination of the activity Portfolio o Saber Junction ↗.
• 22.08.The same period also includes pressure to keep U.S. units in Europe at all. According to Bloomberg, countries on NATO’s eastern flank are planning to take over part of the costs of U.S. bases in order to discourage Washington from withdrawing troops. The battalion now being disbanded belonged under the European command Digi24 ↗G4Media ↗.

The unit was called the Unmanned Assault Battalion and was intended to be a special group deployable anywhere drones would be needed. It was built from soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and received a nickname referring to the army’s famous history in the Second World War. According to the WSJ, it was formally created in January, but agency reporting places the assembly of the six-hundred-member battalion already in November. No date was set at its founding for how long it was supposed to exist. ČT24 ↗ The Independent ↗

A small number of its members quietly completed a rotation in Kyiv, where they met Ukrainian counterparts. In the spring, the battalion worked with Ukrainian drone operators at NATO training areas. ČT24 ↗

The unit is currently taking part in an exercise that will last until September. There it will pass on what it has learned over the year and then, according to an army official, “refocus on its core warfighting tasks as an airborne infantry battalion.” That means a return to airborne operations. CBS News ↗

Removed generals and an apartment at Fort Bragg

The abolition is attributed to General Christopher LaNeve, the deputy chief of staff who also serves as acting chief. It is part of his strategy of returning to basics. The battalion, however, was the initiative of his predecessor Randy George, whom Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth abruptly removed in April. The unit’s second patron was Christopher Donahue, the former commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, who handed over command in the summer and took early retirement. According to CBS News, both were removed or forced to leave early, clearing LaNeve’s path upward. He has been the army’s top uniformed commander since April. CBS News ↗ The Independent ↗

Several current and former officials cited by CBS News say one factor may also have been a long-simmering personal dispute. LaNeve’s command of the 82nd Airborne Division ended earlier than is customary for such a post. After this quiet removal, according to the same sources, he was quickly moved out of a house at Fort Bragg so the new commander could move in, and this very episode contributed to bad blood between him and Donahue. General LaNeve’s spokesperson referred questions to the army, which declined to comment beyond confirming the matter. CBS News ↗

At a spring exercise, Ukrainians “destroyed” the Americans

The timing is all the more awkward because at the spring iteration of the Combined Resolve exercise in Germany, U.S. soldiers encountered Ukrainian drone operators and it did not go well for them. Ukrainian forces easily detected and “destroyed” them, along with their armored vehicles. This was a different exercise from the August one at which the battalion is now passing on its findings. ČT24 ↗

“Ukraine has basically brought a revolution to close combat. General George was beginning to understand that, and any complication of what he was doing would be deeply regrettable and dangerous,” said Michael O'Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution. ČT24 took his words from the original WSJ report. ČT24 ↗

David Petraeus, a retired general and former CIA director, put it even more sharply in April. “In some Western countries today they think innovation is giving an armored battalion fifty drones. No. We should abolish armored battalions and replace them with a drone battalion,” he told CBS News. CBS News ↗

The admission made this month

• 22.08.Jarrard’s admission was not the first — Hegseth put it in black and white already last July. In a July 2025 memorandum, the Pentagon chief acknowledged that U.S. units do not have enough small military drones of the required quality on the modern battlefield, and promised to rebuild both their procurement and their introduction into the force. A year later, the army is disbanding the very unit that was supposed to deal with this Portfolio o Hegsethovom memorande ↗.

The Slovak reader has one more piece of context. Just a few days ago, at a symposium on space and missile defense, Lieutenant General Joseph Jarrard, deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, admitted that the U.S. armed forces do not have the necessary sensors or means against a drone attack and that the ability to respond depends on chance and the location of the strike. A similar warning had already been issued in May by the commander of the same command, Gregory Guillot. DefenceNews.sk ↗

The army did not specify how it plans to accelerate its capabilities in unmanned combat after the battalion ceases to exist. A spokesperson said the army “is committed to accelerating dominance in unmanned aircraft,” but declined to comment on future plans. ČT24 ↗

Read also: Germany opened an anti-drone center against hybrid attacks

And at Fort Stewart they are offering four days off for GTA VI

That same week, a very different story was spreading from the U.S. Army. The commander of the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart in Georgia signed a memo stating that every soldier in the unit who extends their contract between August 1 and November 14 will receive a “special four-day pass.” It is explicitly timed for the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, which comes out on November 19. Task & Purpose ↗

So far, at least twenty of the one hundred thirty eligible soldiers have accepted the offer and signed on for another two to six years. The idea came from the battalion’s new career counselor as something that would “appeal” to younger soldiers and could help the unit meet its recruiting goals for fiscal year 2027, which begins in October. “The command team, together with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited about extending their contracts,” explained the spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel Angel Tomko. Task & Purpose ↗

This is a different unit, a different command, and it has nothing to do with the drone battalion. The Fort Stewart battalion is an engineer unit and also includes signal soldiers, personnel specialists, and medics. Even so, within a single day the story reached Belgian, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, and Bosnian media, meaning it very quickly traveled beyond U.S. military media. In our monitoring of European media, the abolition of the drone battalion has so far been noticed only by the British Independent and Czech public television. In Slovak media, neither of the two stories has appeared. VRT NWS ↗ ABC ↗ Klix.ba ↗

Side by side, the two stories say something about how the army today keeps people, and what it preserves from the Ukrainian experience in an independent unit versus what it leaves only in notes for further training. Over the past year, it has also tried linking retention bonuses to annual physical test results or daily work performance, and let warrant officers compete with each other for higher bonuses. Task & Purpose ↗

What hotinfo is watching

The exercise in Germany is due to end in September. We are watching whether the army will publish the findings that the battalion passes on there, or whether they will remain internal.

General LaNeve presented his vision in a document called Army Azimuth, which builds on units linking space, cyber, and electronic capabilities with artificial intelligence. We are watching whether the army will show how these capacities will replace a separate drone battalion.

By November 14, it will become clear how many of the one hundred thirty soldiers at Fort Stewart ultimately accept the offer.

The dispute between Pentagon chief Hegseth and Secretary of the Army Driscoll has, according to the WSJ, been going on for months. We are watching whether it will translate into further removals of senior commanders.

The battalion was stationed in Europe and worked with Ukrainian operators at NATO training ranges. We are watching whether any European army takes over this role.