One hundred unmanned aircraft at once was the top of the threat scale XVIII Airborne Corps soldiers trained against at Fort Bragg, N.C. During Scarlet Dragon 26-3, held Sept. 11–17, 2026, the corps combined 50- and 100-drone swarms with other threat profiles to pressure its air-defense network across multiple echelons.
The exercise was not a single-system shootout. Attack helicopters, ground radars, electronic warfare equipment and autonomous detection platforms were run side by side so the corps could see which capabilities integrate across the force and which do not.
XVIII Airborne Corps Public Affairs published its account of Scarlet Dragon 26-3 on Sept. 21, 2026. During the exercise, Apaches from the 82nd Airborne Division Combat Aviation Brigade flew high-speed, nap-of-the-earth profiles while Sentinel radars fed tracks into a shared air picture. Col. Tom Monahan, director of the corps’ Joint Innovation Outpost, described what the exercise has become:…