US Army’s AM platoon fabricates counter-UAS mounts in the field during Flytrap 5.0
Soldiers used 3D printing and subtractive manufacturing to produce vehicle-mount hardware for vendor-supplied systems on the fly while on a live-fire counter-drone exercise in Lithuania
The US Army‘s 2nd Cavalry Regiment put its organic additive manufacturing capability to practical use during Flytrap 5.0, a counter-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) exercise held at Pabradė Training Area in Lithuania this month.
Led by V Corps, the exercise brought together the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command; 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment; the United Kingdom’s 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment; and allied and industry partners for live-fire evaluation of both program-of-record and commercially provided counter-drone systems against small UAS threats, including swarms.
Running alongside that counter-UAS work, the regiment’s dedicated additive manufacturing platoon produced mounts, brackets, and other hardware needed to install vendor counter-UAS equipment onto Stryker combat vehicles. These were components that had no off-the-shelf solution available in theater.
“With their team they have lathes, they have 3D printing machines, they have all sorts of additives and subtractive manufacturing kit. And throughout the exercise, not only were they fixing and repairing drones that would be used throughout training, but they were also fabricating several of the mounts, the brackets, and other kinds of key pieces of equipment that we needed to install some of this vendor counter-UAS equipment onto our Strykers,” said US Army Maj. Galen King, Executive Officer with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.
The platoon’s workflow concentrated on identifying a subcomponent requirement, modeling it in CAD software, and producing a functional part without a formal supply chain. King described the approach as delivering an “80% solution” capable of bridging the gap between commercial kit and military platform.
“The thing I think that was a real highlight during this experience was them being able to see a subcomponent of a counter-UAS system, or a mount or a bracket, be able to use a CAD program and then be able to fabricate an 80% solution that was able to take a piece of vendor kit and then integrate it onto our Stryker,” he stated.
The platoon also has prior history with drone fabrication, having 3D printed the regiment’s initial tranche of UAS airframes in earlier Flytrap iterations. The Army previously procured more than 30 3D printers that travel with the regiment in modular shelters, with units recently supporting operations in both Lithuania and Poland.
King described expeditionary additive manufacturing as now being integral to how the regiment operates when deployed. “This is something that we’ve kind of been experiencing for the last two years, is that expeditionary additive manufacturing is really just kind of an essential component of what the regiment does when it deploys,” he added.
