Poland holds first NATO exercises on combat drone use based on lessons from the war in Ukraine

Polish special forces soldiers became the first NATO ally to run a new combat drone scenario developed by U.S. Army Green Berets directly from the lessons of the war in Ukraine.

The exercises took place at the Joint Multinational Training Center in Hohenfels, Germany.

Prior to this, the same scenario had been used only twice this year by American special operations units. Polish troops became the first alliance partner admitted to the training program.

The multi-day exercises required Polish troops to slip past a U.S. airborne infantry unit playing the role of the enemy and cover roughly 100 kilometers through the German countryside — past farms, villages, surveillance cameras, and the city of Amberg — before striking a training target at the Grafenwöhr range with a drone. The exercises began on a moonless, rainy Friday night, with Polish soldiers silently slipping out of a building styled as a church and moving toward the edge of a forest.

“We are using lessons learned from the war in Ukraine. All the factors that Russia or Ukraine have to deal with — we are doing everything we can to recreate them,” said a Green Beret officer attached to the training complex.

To test their concealment skills, soldiers changed into civilian clothes and moved around like ordinary residents. Germans living in the area were largely unaware of the exercises: if locals reported suspicious activity to police, that information was passed to the military and used to track the group. The U.S. Army simultaneously hunted the Polish troops using more than a hundred drones, military police units, and service dogs.

A master sergeant familiar with the training program said the exercises are planned to be held several times a year, with most if not all of NATO’s 32 member states expected to want to send their personnel. The maneuvers ran in parallel with separate Iron Defender exercises involving Polish and NATO forces at a training range in Orzysz, Poland.

Can Kasapoğlu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argues that Ukraine’s combat experience clearly demonstrates that affordable, scalable, and sustainable mass solutions can outperform high-tech and extremely costly systems on the battlefield. He cites the cost ratio between Ukrainian drones and the Russian equipment they destroy as an example.

The exercises are taking place against a backdrop of mixed signals from Washington. President Donald Trump has repeatedly shifted his position on reducing the number of U.S. troops in Europe, and the Army chief of staff disbanded a unit specializing in drone warfare. CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow this week to warn Russia against attacking NATO countries, The Wall Street Journal reports.

A series of mysterious drone incursions over Europe lends additional urgency to the exercises. Earlier this month, drones were spotted over a German military base, and a drone carrying explosives was discovered at one of Germany’s major cargo airports. Ukraine is also helping Middle Eastern countries counter Iranian drone attacks; the United States and European nations have requested similar support from Kyiv.