Army’s New MUM-T Unit Sees Combat
The U.S. Army’s first new formation of manned-unmanned teaming units, a Heavy Attack Reconnaissance Squadron, recently returned from combat overseas, broadening the service’s use of the technique where unmanned aircraft and manned aircraft or ground troops can share information, including video streams.
It is “certainly not the first time that we’ve done manned-unmanned teaming in any of the operational theaters, but it’s the first time that there’s a unit deliberately formed in a manned-unmanned teaming construct and deployed over into a combat theater,” said Col. Courtney Cote, project manager at the Army’s UAS Project Office, in a briefing with Unmanned Systems: Xponential Edition.
“So those people live, work, all their mission command comes from the same place. They train together. They live together,” Cote says. “Before it was the just the mating of two … formations that came from two different organizations who were put into the same battlespace and said, operate together.”
The Army has also been updating much of its unmanned aircraft inventory, including buying new Gray Eagle UAS that will have an extended range, fielding the new version of the venerable Shadow tactical UAS, moving its rucksack-portable small UAS to a new frequency band and seeking candidates for a new micro UAS.
The improved Gray Eagles were funded in 2015 and will have an improved fuel tank, some aerodynamic changes and a returned engine. The Army is building four of the first aircraft now and doing engine testing. Ultimately, it plans to buy 36.
