The War Zone has reported:

The U.S. Army is exploring how uncrewed aircraft and ground vehicles could mislead opponents as part of a broader effort to prepare for battlefields crowded with drones and electronic warfare systems. Col. Timothy Price, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, discussed those concepts at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention, where The War Zone was in attendance. The regiment, based in Germany, is a brigade-sized mechanized formation equipped primarily with variants of the Stryker 8×8 light armoured vehicle.

For more than a year, Army forces in Europe have been testing counter-drone capabilities and the tactics, techniques and procedures associated with them under Project Flytrap. The experimentation has also given the service insight into ways uncrewed systems might shape the battlefield for friendly forces, including by creating new opportunities to deceive an enemy. Price’s comments covered deception as well as other operational concepts that have emerged during the project.

Price began by describing modern battlefields filled with uncrewed platforms in the air and on the ground as adding new dimensions to long-standing military problems. He used the established framework SOSRA, meaning Suppress, Obscure, Secure, Reduce and Assault, to explain how forces might pass through a minefield or similar obstacle, and how that process changes when the obstacle includes electronic and drone threats.

“If we were going to breach a mined wire obstacle, the first step of SOSRA - suppress - would be the utilization of indirect fires, to get the enemy’s head down, and direct fire systems, so they would not maneuver on you, fix them in place, and you can make a decision about how you’re going to approach the problem,” Price said. In the traditional sequence, he explained, the next step is to obscure the breach with smoke so the enemy cannot see the movement toward it.

He said the force would then secure the area by establishing front-side security, allowing engineers to move forward within that local security bubble. The engineers would use a line charge or another method to open a gap, reducing the obstacle, before a follow-on assault force moved through. A briefing slide Price showed at AUSA illustrated SOSRA on what he described as a modern “multi-domain” battlefield.

“We were brought up around the old traditional mined wire obstacles that we had to physically breach. This is no different,” Price said. “It’s just a multi-domain environment. So it’s built up of a combination of electronic warfare, kinetic UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] threats, and then counter-UAS threats, and then the network that holds [that all] together that forms the obstacle, which a unit has to maneuver through in order to maintain the offensive.”

The suppression stage now includes finding and affecting enemy uncrewed systems and electromagnetic emissions. Price said brigade-sized formations do not necessarily have all the organizational tools needed to address every part of that task. Some targets, including ground control stations for enemy drones, may be miles behind the front line, requiring support from division-level or higher headquarters.

Price said a unit may need to prompt the enemy to activate systems that would otherwise remain concealed, then have higher headquarters apply an effect. “So, what we have to do is allow the enemy to turn on their systems. How do I suppress them to allow division, or higher, to put an effect on them for suppression? It probably looks like flying small, attritable UAS [sic] into their security area” in the rear, he said.

The small aircraft could make the enemy switch from passive to active electronic warfare, or turn on radars to identify what is approaching. Those emissions would create a detectable signature that higher headquarters could use for targeting. Price did not label this process deception, but it can mislead enemy operators into revealing their positions by inducing them to activate equipment.

Drawing out air defences to gather intelligence about them and then suppress or destroy them is an established military tactic. Once an emitter has been identified and geolocated, it can be targeted. The broader aim of passing information through a more deeply networked kill chain is to reduce the time between detection and the arrival of fires, potentially making it almost instantaneous.

The Army has previously highlighted how electronic emissions can expose forces. In 2020, then-Army Col. Scott Woodward, who was commander of the 11th Cavalry Regiment at the time, shared an annotated satellite image showing the electronic emissions signature of a battalion-sized element and how those signals could leave a unit vulnerable to attack.

Price said deception has a more direct role in the obscuration stage. Rather than relying only on smoke to conceal movement through an obstacle, a force could try to make the enemy believe the breach will occur somewhere other than its actual location. “Obscuration is different, as well. So instead of trying to hide behind smoke as we maneuver through it, what is the deception plan, right? How am I trying to show the enemy a signature that says I’m going to breach over here when I’m actually going to breach here, right?” he said.

He suggested uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, fitted with decoy emitters could draw enemy attention and resources toward a false location. “So, that’s probably the implementation of UGVs [uncrewed ground vehicles] with some kind of decoy emitter on top of them to pull the enemy’s eyes, resources, and time to a point that allows me to focus my assets and resources on the point of breach.”

Using uncrewed platforms as decoys is not a new concept. The U.S. military has previously explored more elaborate systems designed to imitate other objects, including birds and other animals, for deception. In 2019, The War Zone reported in detail on a Navy effort then called the Netted Emulation of Multi-Element Signature against Integrated Sensors, or NEMESIS.

NEMESIS was described as a networked, cooperative electronic warfare ecosystem relying heavily on drones and working across domains. It was intended to make different types of sensors over large areas perceive the same false fleets of aircraft or ships, confusing an adversary on a broad scale. Unclassified 2014 briefing slides about the programme included drone boats alongside other uncrewed platforms.

The article also connected drone deception to reports of unidentified aerial phenomena, previously called unidentified flying objects. Some sightings remain unexplained, while many others have been identified as drones. The article said adversaries have used uncrewed capabilities for intelligence gathering and deception against American interests at home and abroad, possibly taking advantage of the stigma around unidentified sightings as cover.

A post by Tyler Rogoway, identified as @Aviation_Intel, dated Sept. 21, 2026, said: “I don’t know what this is, or if it’s legit BUT remember we are in a new age of misdirection, decoy and guile. Specifically using low end drone technology. There are more ways to stimulate an enemy air defense system, distract a populous, assess the flow of public info from a…” The post included a link, but the supplied text did not provide the remainder of the message.

The Army has also been testing different UGV designs in recent years, both within the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and in other units. The service has spent years trying to expand the operational use of ground robots, but has encountered repeated setbacks. Price also described obscuration as including control of heat and thermal signatures, as well as basic practices that limit the chance of detection.

“It’s also spectral camouflage. So how are we controlling our heat and thermal signatures on our vehicles and our people?” Price said. “It’s basic soldier discipline issues. It’s how we use our radios. It’s where we’re talking, where we’re not. But that’s what obscuration looks like.” A Soviet-designed 2S3 self-propelled howitzer viewed through a thermal camera was shown as an example of how heat signatures can put forces at risk.

Project Flytrap’s main focus has been counter-drone capabilities, which Price associated with the secure stage of SOSRA. He said layered assets support the force at the breach point, while his regiment focuses on its part of the operation. Those assets include active and passive electronic warfare systems that can detect a threat and, in some cases, disrupt it by cutting a drone’s downlink, as well as equipment available to individual soldiers.

“There’s multi-layered assets on top of that to allow that convergence for our success at the point of breach. I’m going to focus on our corner, our part of the battle, right?” Price said. “So, I’m looking at active and passive electronic warfare systems - that can either, one, find [threats], let me know that I’ve got some kind of system flying or operating against me and, then, if it’s an active system, take some kind of effect to maybe cut a downlink and disrupt that system - all the way down to the individual soldier with a shotgun.”

The obstacle to be reduced may now be a set of enemy one-way attack drones holding up an advance, rather than a minefield and barbed wire. Price said friendly kamikaze drones could help clear those threats, while decoys and deception could continue to support the breach. “This is where, at the brigade level, we introduce one-way attack munitions to try to destroy the C2 [command and control] network that the enemy is using to operate this reconnaissance/strike complex” that is standing in the way, he said.