Bipartisan Lawmakers Press Army to Explain Disbanding of Drone Warfare Unit

A bipartisan group of four U.S. lawmakers sent a formal letter to the Army's acting chief of staff Wednesday demanding an explanation for why the service ordered the 173rd Airborne Brigade — the Army's primary rapid-deployment force in Europe — to stop specializing in drone warfare, a decision that comes as uncrewed systems have emerged as the defining tactical feature of modern conflict and as American troops in the Middle East continue to be targeted and killed by exactly the kind of drones the 173rd was training to counter and employ.

The letter was addressed to Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army's vice chief of staff currently serving in an acting capacity. It was signed by Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, independent Sen. Angus King of Maine and Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio — a cross-partisan group that spans the Armed Services Committees of both chambers and reflects the breadth of concern the decision has generated. The Army had not responded publicly to the letter as of Wednesday evening.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade is forward-deployed across Italy and Germany and functions as the Army's contingency response force for the U.S. European, African and Central Command areas of responsibility — designed to move faster than any other formation when a crisis demands rapid ground presence. Beginning in November 2025, the brigade was designated to develop a specialized drone warfare capability: a 600-soldier unit that would build its own drones, practice the integration of uncrewed systems with ground maneuver, and develop the tactical doctrine that Ukraine has pioneered against Russia and that adversaries including Iran have deployed against American forces. The unit was set up to be deployable anywhere that drone-intensive operations were needed.

Less than a year after that designation, the Army ordered the unit to stop. The 173rd would no longer specialize in drone warfare. The reasons for the decision have not been disclosed publicly.

The lawmakers' letter presses the Army on three specific questions. First, they want the data, analysis and internal process that produced the decision — a request aimed at determining whether there was a substantive military rationale or whether the order reflected bureaucratic resistance to unconventional doctrine within the service's existing institutional culture. Second, they want to know whether the decision originated with Pentagon leadership — specifically whether it came from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office or from Army leadership's own chain of command. Third, they want to understand what the Army believes specialized drone training was failing to accomplish that generalized training will achieve.

"This specialized unit was a prudent response in a moment when the character of warfare is changing faster than a conventional formation's ability to adapt," the lawmakers wrote. "We have deep concerns that eliminating this specialized drone unit will limit our ability to learn from allies, particularly the Ukrainian Army."

That reference to Ukraine is not incidental. Ukraine's armed forces have built what analysts and military observers now describe as the world's most operationally advanced drone warfare capability, forged under fire against a numerically superior adversary. Ukrainian drone units have developed tactics for FPV strike drones, long-range one-way attack systems, electronic warfare integration, and AI-assisted targeting that NATO allies — including the United States — have explicitly sought to study and incorporate. The 173rd, forward-deployed in Europe and routinely exercising with NATO partners, was structurally positioned to serve as the primary American conduit for that knowledge transfer. Video from the brigade's 2025 exercises in Lithuania shows soldiers testing first-person view drones against moving armored targets — precisely the kind of training that drone-warfare practitioners describe as foundational to current Ukrainian battlefield success.

The Iran dimension is equally direct. Since hostilities began February 28, American troops across the Middle East have been targeted by Iranian drones and by the Iranian-supplied drones of proxy forces. The Port Shuaiba attack on March 1, in which a one-way attack drone killed six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers, demonstrated the lethality of cheap, low-observable uncrewed systems against American positions. The 173rd's drone warfare program was explicitly modeled on the kind of tactics that produced that attack — and was designed to give American forces both the offensive capability and the doctrinal understanding needed to contest that threat class.

The Army's decision to walk back the specialization comes against this backdrop, and it is that juxtaposition — American soldiers dying from drone attacks while a specialized drone warfare unit is ordered to demobilize its drone mission — that gives the lawmakers' inquiry its urgency. Whether the decision reflects a considered judgment that distributing drone capability across all units is more effective than concentrating it in a specialist force, or whether it reflects something less analytically grounded, is precisely what the letter is asking.

The broader institutional context matters. The U.S. Army has struggled for years with how to integrate uncrewed systems into its organizational structure. A January 2026 directive from Hegseth called for every Army division to be equipped with approximately 1,000 drones by the end of 2026, and ordered a shift from large, expensive crewed systems toward cheaper, more adaptable uncrewed platforms. Russia has meanwhile established a dedicated Unmanned Systems Force branch of its military — 114,000 personnel as of mid-2026 — signaling a commitment to drone warfare as a primary military domain rather than a supplementary capability.

Whether disbanding the 173rd's specialization is consistent with the Army's stated drone integration goals, or contradicts them, is a question the service has not yet answered. LaNeve, filling in as acting chief while the Army secretary position remains in transition following Dan Driscoll's resignation, is expected to respond to the lawmakers' inquiry within a timeframe the letter did not specify. The Army's Office of Public Affairs did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Originally published on HNGN