2nd Multi-Domain Task Force leveraged the V-BAT UAS pictured here during Exercise ‘Arcane Thunder' in Ustka, Poland. (US Army)
US Army's 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) – the newest unit type in the service – is experimenting with more unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), launched effects, and high-altitude balloons (HAB) as part of Exercise ‘Arcane Thunder 2024' than the same exercise last year, a unit officer revealed on 8 August.
During ‘Arcane Thunder 2023' in Poland, soldiers could deploy about four assets at a time, said Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Ritzema, 2nd Multi-Domain Effects Battalion commander, US Army Europe and Africa. Now that 2nd MDTF is more established, about eight assets were able to be used at a time during the exercise, which took place across greater distances this year in Morocco.
“We really ramped up not only the complexity, but really the range and scale of what we're trying to get after,” Lt Col Ritzema said during National Defense Industrial Association's Emerging Technology Institute's conference in Washington, DC.
“The battalion was not even two years old” during the last exercise, so this year's complexity is the next step in building on the unit's capability, he said.
The exercise is ongoing in Morocco and is expected to wrap up in a week. Battalion headquarters is located at Agadir with the launch and recovery station located about 50 km away and a sensing area that is over 100 km away, he said. “So we really have quite a spread here,” Lt Col Ritzema said.
“With the launch of the HABs, there was a point in time where there was, within a 12-hour period, we had anywhere between six and eight assets up in the air,” he said.
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