Jammed and confused: Alaska trial shows pitfalls of fielding US drones
By Courtney Albon
Tuesday, Jul 15, 2025
Drone firm Dragoon flew its Sender uncrewed air system June 23 during a Defense Innovation Unit test event in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Courtney Albon, Defense News)
FAIRBANKS, Alaska — During the last few weeks of June, dozens of aircraft gathered on the flight line at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska as part of Red Flag — a premier, multinational exercise the base hosts each year. The event offers a venue for the U.S. and its allies to demonstrate advanced, tactical air combat and prepare military units for wartime operations.
About 20 miles to the northwest of Eielson on a sparse, dirt range just outside the Army’s Fort Wainright, a very different kind of testing and training demonstration overlapped with the latter half of Red Flag. The Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s commercial technology hub, chose a handful of companies to trial small, long-range attack drones designed to navigate and hit targets amid attempts to jam their signals.
While much smaller in size and scope than the venerable Red Flag drill nearby, DIU’s tests hit on themes that may be just as consequential for the future of aerial warfare — the role of drones in modern combat, and whether the Pentagon can help stimulate the expansion of the domestic industrial base and transform its own internal bureaucracy in a way that allows it to buy those systems in meaningful quantities.
https://www.c4isrnet.com/pentagon/2025/07/15/jammed-and-confused-alaska-trial-shows-pitfalls-of-fielding-us-drones/
