Drones Give and Take in Unusual Ways These Days
A few interesting stories that help add color to what warfare is in 2025.
In Poland, Soldiers of the 15th Giżycko “Zawiszy Czarnego” Mechanized Brigade have been “testing new technologies for MEDEVAC procedures, notification systems, and modern teleinformation tools for planning and managing medical evacuations during both operations and emergencies.”
This includes using a large quadcopter UAV with a Stokes litter slung underneath for casevac.
Looks fun unless you are in the litter…
The Poles, who are continually keeping active tabs on what is going on in Ukraine, are all in on drones moving forward.
Drone troops are the future of the Polish army, the future of all types of armed forces. They will have hundreds of thousands of drones: flying, ground, surface, and underwater – said Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of National Defence Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz on Wednesday during the annual task and settlement briefing of the management of the Ministry of National Defence and the command staff of the Polish Army.
Now, flash to the Sinai along the Israeli-Egyptian border, where the IDF recently intercepted and captured a UAV entering Israeli airspace. After downing the drone (which still looks intact, so it was probably via a soft kill ECM device) 10 M-16 style rifles and ammunition were recovered, no doubt being smuggled to Palestinian militant groups.
The rifles appear to be ChiCom Norinco CQs, which have been widely used and are available for sale in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Libya. The Iranians even make a variant of the CQ domestically (as the Sayyad 5.56) for the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
And from the wastes of the Mojave Desert, where the 11th “Blackhorse” Armored Cavalry Regiment has been routinely beating the tracks off folks as the OPFOR at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin for the past 30 years, drones are well in hand to shake things up.
According to the Blackhorse’s social media team, they have been integrating FPV drones of the type often seen in use as simple munitions droppers and unmanned kamikazes in Ukraine and Syria, drone-deployed minefields, and their own legacy systems to lay waste to visiting units and making it look easy.
