Three weeks. Soldering irons, tactical ranges, and high winds over Colorado. The 10th Special Forces Group just graduated its latest class of drone operators. These ones can also repair what they fly.
Three Weeks on the Range and in the Classroom
From February 9 through February 27, Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) completed an Advanced Drone Course at Fort Carson, Colorado, as The U.S. Army reported. The course was led by instructors from 4th Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group, and brought together Special Forces soldiers alongside one soldier from the 4th Infantry Division.
The training ran across three demanding weeks split between classroom instruction and live exercises on multiple tactical ranges. High winds tore across the range throughout the training period. Tumbleweeds, debris, swirling gusts.
The drones flew anyway, locked on course and unmoved by the conditions. That is the point of training in Colorado in February rather than waiting for a calm spring afternoon.
The curriculum covered soldering, assembly, programming, and piloting of small unmanned aerial systems. Graduates leave the course capable of independently maintaining and repairing their systems in austere environments, which means without a supply chain, without a tech support line, and without the option to wait.
The Mindset Behind the Training
The M4 comparison made by one of the course instructors from 4th Battalion is the clearest possible articulation of where the Army wants drone proficiency to sit.
If your M4 jams, you do not stop. You find a solution. The same mindset applies to drones. Soldiers need to perform basic repairs and keep the mission moving.
That is not a metaphor. It is a maintenance standard. If a motor burns out in the field, a graduate of this course can re-solder a replacement, restore the aircraft, and continue the mission without evacuating the platform to a maintenance depot.
That capability matters enormously in the kind of remote, denied-access environments where Special Forces operate. A drone that cannot be fixed on site is a drone that becomes a liability after its first malfunction…