During an April training rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, the 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne turned the skies into a test range for one-way attack drones. The brigade flew roughly 228 one-way attack systems, and Col. Ryan Bell says more than 150 of those were built by his own soldiers in a division fabrication shop. The low-cost A101 platforms pulled double and triple duty for intelligence collection, electronic-warfare strikes and a robotic breach that kept infantry off the most dangerous ground.
Bell walked through the numbers and the unit’s approach during a June 25 media roundtable, explaining that the division’s RAID (Robotics and Autonomous Integration Directorate) shop at Fort Campbell handed troops CNC machines, 3D printers and other tools so they could tweak payloads and airframes almost in real time. Once trained, he said, a 19-year-old soldier can assemble an A101 in an afternoon, with the fuse, warhead and airframe all produced on site. His comments appear in a roundtable transcript on Army.mil.
Soldier-made Drones, Cost And Production
The A101, described by leaders as a Purpose-Built Attritable System, runs about $750 per drone and is built from parts on the Pentagon’s approved Blue UAS list, according to Business Insider. Soldiers said the most time-consuming pieces are the microchips and soldering work, but the relatively low price is what makes it practical to treat the drones as expendable in both training and, commanders argue, future combat. The division has also 3D-printed accessories such as a grappling-hook dropper and a small breaching munition, giving units a way to rapidly experiment with new tactics.
How The Brigade Used Them At JRTC
In one robotic combined-arms breach, the brigade sent waves of A101 PBAS drones ahead of the force to suppress bunkers, hit jammers and drop smoke. Only after that aerial pounding did unmanned ground vehicles rumble in carrying 28-pound breaching charges, as Bell described in an interview detailed by Breaking Defense. The sequence kept infantry back while robots tackled obstacles and critical positions. Commanders said the run suggested that autonomy and cheap, expendable airframes could reshape how a breach unfolds, if the Army can field them in large enough numbers.
What This Scale Means For The Army
Bell told reporters that volume is the whole ballgame. Inside the training “box,” his brigade generated more than 25,000 drone spot reports in just 10 days, and he estimated that a brigade in sustained combat would need roughly 1,000 to 1,500 PBAS drones every week. Hitting that kind of demand, he said, will require industry to churn out many more low-cost airframes while pushing autonomy forward so a single operator can control multiple drones at once. The Army is already experimenting with AI tools at the staff level to digest the overwhelming stream of sensor data and turn it into targeting and maneuver decisions, according to Army.mil.
Policy And Safety Questions
The RAID team’s 3D-printed dropper designed to release hand grenades has already been shared with other units, raising fresh oversight and safety questions as soldier-built munitions spread through the force, according to Business Insider. Leaders acknowledge that microchip availability and the need for certified components are real bottlenecks, and commanders have urged industry to help scale production while keeping the price tag low. Experts warn that the mix of democratized manufacturing and attritable weapons could complicate export controls and arms-control talks as low-cost loitering munitions become more common, a concern highlighted in Breaking Defense.
Whatever position one takes in that ethics debate, the 101st’s JRTC rotation offers a blunt takeaway: soldier-level design and 3D printing can spin up field-tailored weapons at impressive speed, and the Army’s logistics system and industry partners will have to hustle to keep pace. Commanders say the experiments are ultimately about pulling troops out of the most lethal spaces while testing how far they can push expendable robotics. Officials in Washington are watching closely to see whether this homebuilt approach can scale beyond a few cutting-edge units.
