American military actually pays significant attention to assessing Ukraine's Defense Forces experience and implements it in various variations. Recently they even needed urgent help to protect one of their Middle East airbases.
Among everything, U.S. quite thoroughly analyzes Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb, which became literally textbook example of how with limited means one can pose threat to enemy strategic aviation and destroy several bombers at airfields thousands of kilometers away without long-range missiles.
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As Defense One reports, back in September last year American special operators during exercises attempted to recreate Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb. These exercises took place at Eglin Air Force Base and were named Operation Clear Horizon. Moreover, if some units played attacker role, others attempted to repel this attack — units whose specialization is specifically countering unmanned aerial vehicles.
Moreover, genuinely significant drone quantity of different sizes and types was used to simulate strike, both ordinary commercial and jam-resistant as well as fiber-optic drones and LTE network-controlled. For first time, American military implemented remote control, when operator in Colorado state launched them at targets in Florida — hundreds of kilometers. At the same time, Ukraine recently already demonstrated 2,000km drone remote control capability thanks to Hornet Vision Ctrl system from Wild Hornets company.
As Brigadier General Matt Ross from Joint Interagency Task Force 401 from Pentagon drone combat center emphasized, Operation Clear Horizon conducted during exercises helped them determine priorities. Before that, their specialists were in Ukraine and also analyzed promising technologies based on their battlefield use data, not internal testing and department assessment greenhouse results.
Most interestingly, U.S.-conducted exercises analogous to Ukrainian Spiderweb among everything concluded need to have capability to unite data coming from different sources — from radars, counter-drone systems and drones themselves — into one network. Americans now use unified software for tracking unmanned systems in all armed forces branches.
However, as recently became known, U.S. in Saudi Arabia to strengthen protection of Prince Sultan airbase, which suffered greatly from iranian strikes with American military sustaining serious losses there including rare and valuable equipment, hastily deploys Ukrainian systems, specifically Sky Map command and control system from Sky Fortress company.
Overall this is not first time U.S. draws conclusions specifically from Operation Spiderweb, and this is not surprising given its uniqueness, when expensive equipment was destroyed with limited means.
For example, drawing conclusions from this mission, U.S. discovered drones could easily demolish airbase with F-35s or defense plant, moreover this involves not so much presence or absence of certain assets but literally bureaucratic problems.
Moreover, Operation Spidereb even influenced $175 billion Golden Dome, and this is again about need to pay much more attention specifically to protection inside country, moreover not only from missiles but now from strike drone threat.
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