Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan interacts with a fellow participant in exercise Talisman Sabre in Townsville, Australia, on Aug. 1, 2023. Now a lieutenant general, Ryan warned in a speech at a conference of the Association of the U.S. Army on March 25, 2025, that the service is "so far behind" in adapting to the use of new fiber-optic drones. (Mariah Aguilar/U.S. Army)
A top Army general, detailing new fiber-optic drone technology that defies jamming and has transformed the battlefield in Ukraine, delivered a pointed warning this week to an audience of American military insiders.
“We are so far behind,” Lt. Gen. Joseph Ryan, the service’s deputy chief of operations, plans and training, said Tuesday at an Association of the U.S. Army conference in Alabama.
Although he didn’t mention Russia, the technology he described relates to a new breed of drones introduced by the Kremlin into the Russia-Ukraine war last year.
Instead, Ryan offered up a “word picture,” saying a fiber-optic quadcopter has a range of 24 miles, can carry a 6-pound payload and is “impervious to electronic warfare and electronic attack.”
The technology relies on a reel of fiber-optic cable that unspools during flight and allows the drone to evade electronic jammers, which have increasingly neutralized other types of unmanned systems.
So equipment like the Dronebuster, which U.S. forces in the Middle East, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region have trained to use against such attacks, could be of limited effectiveness in dealing with the drones Ryan mentioned.
Such technology has given Russia an edge, but Ukraine was quick to adapt, fielding similar drones of its own in recent months.
For the Army, the Russia-Ukraine war has served as a laboratory to draw lessons from as it seeks to play catch-up and prepare soldiers for a high-tech future battlefield.
The initiative, known as “transforming in contact,” seeks to empower units to experiment more freely with equipment and tactics.
Ryan isn’t the first to take the Army to task for its serious lagging in drone adaptation. A report last year by the Modern War Institute at West Point said Ukrainian soldiers trained by the U.S. in Germany were shocked by the Americans’ lack of knowledge about drone tactics.
While Ryan didn’t specifically address what the Army was doing to incorporate fiber-optic style drones, he said a wide array of new equipment is headed to units.
The service is preparing to field more than 1,100 drone systems, hundreds of electronic warfare systems and 1,200 counter-drone systems, he said.
Troops at the small-unit level have embraced the transformation concept and are coming up with new ways to put technology to use, Ryan added.
For example, the 101st Airborne Division recently launched its own drone-making mission aimed at getting cheap aerial systems into the hands of soldiers for experimentation.
That initiative is one of many across the Army focused on incorporating commercial-type drones like the ones Ukraine and Russia have used to powerful effect. However, Ryan cited concerns about the reluctance of some leaders to part ways with technology that is no longer effective.
“I think where we are taking risk is our inability to unattach ourselves from an archaic acquisition system,” he said.
Ryan highlighted resistance the Army faced last year to the cancellation of the Shadow unmanned reconnaissance system, a main feature of Army formations since 2003, as an example of what can hold the service back.
“We canceled the Shadow, and it was an emotional event for a lot of people,” he said. “And my point is that platform was not going to survive the first day in combat against a near-peer (enemy). Not one freaking day.”
Eliminating the Shadow without a ready replacement brought questions from division and brigade commanders about an ensuing capability gap.
In the Shadow’s place, the Army moved to reinvest in more cutting-edge and survivable drones.
