SAM SKOVE
Staff Sgt. David Meyer peered intently into the screen of his hand-held drone controller, sweat slowly beading through his face paint in the 100-degree heat.
Somewhere below his quadcopter, an allied unit was under attack by Geronimo, the highly skilled force that plays the enemy in weeks-long wargames at the U.S. Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center here.
Meyer suspected the Geronimo troops of trying to trick his side into burning through its ammo. Then they’d melt back into the forest to strike again elsewhere. It’s the sort of game that comes naturally to Geronimo, whose home-team status gives them an unmatched knowledge of the training area’s 250,000 acres of pine forest.
This time, they may have underestimated their opponent.
Meyer was part of the new Lethal Unmanned Systems platoon, one of the Army’s first formations dedicated entirely to operating short-range reconnaissance drones. If Meyer’s drones could find Geronimo, they could bring the fire of an attached platoon of 81mm mortars and turn the opposition's raid into a disaster.
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