[Report by Zhang Qian] According to a report by the U.S. “Warzone” website on the 21st, the U.S. Army recently uploaded a video on social media platform X showing a drone dropping a grenade. The report claimed that the video was intended to “showcase” the work done by the U.S. Army in deploying small armed drones, but it highlighted the fact that the U.S. Army and other branches are lagging behind global trends in related technology.
“Have you ever seen a drone drop a grenade?” an official X account of the U.S. Army posted earlier on the 21st, asking, “Come and see for the first time how soldiers from the 7th Training Command, the United Nations Multinational Training Group Ukraine, and the 173rd Parachute Regiment deployed a drone system to drop live grenades at the German Grafenwoehl Military Training Base.”
The tone, content of the video, and comments of the post were severely disconnected from the global development of small armed drones. Any person who had followed the field’s progress over the past decade would have answered affirmatively to the question, “Have you ever seen a drone drop a grenade?”
The post has now been deleted, but the attached video is still circulating online.
On the 10th of this month, the Pentagon announced a major reform aimed at accelerating the deployment process of small drones (including armed ones) across the entire military, equipping thousands of drones. “Warzone” reported that this new policy represents a “significant shift” for the U.S. military, which had previously made slow progress in widely deploying drones. However, the website also commented that it remains to be seen how the U.S. military will implement the new drone policy and its impact on related policies. Despite several initiatives, the U.S. military still lags behind in large-scale deployment of drone systems, especially at the grassroots level. Observations from the Ukrainian battlefield further highlight the significant gap between the current scale of U.S. military drone applications and global trends.