US Army used 35 drones and 100 lb of C4 to clear a breach

The US Army's Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) battalion, part of the 10th Mountain Division, recently demonstrated a new tactic: using a swarm of 35 small drones (including quadcopters and loitering munitions like the Switchblade) and 100 pounds of C4 explosives carried by explosive-laden robots to autonomously clear a breach path through a fortified enemy position. This matters because it's one of the first large-scale exercises showing how the Army plans to use unmanned systems — not just for surveillance or single-target strikes, but as a coordinated, semi-autonomous assault force to replace the traditional "breach" choreography where soldiers manually place explosives under fire. The test reflects a broader Pentagon push, accelerated by the war in Ukraine, to field drone swarms and robotic ground vehicles that can suppress, obscure, and breach defenses without putting human lives in the kill zone.