In the dense woods of Fort Johnson, Louisiana, a small battalion from the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade prepared for battle. But this wasn't a conventional war game.

Their enemy, the 1st Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment — known as “Geronimo” — is one of the Army’s most seasoned opposition forces.

They specialize in simulating real-world threats using tactics drawn from modern battlefields like Ukraine.

What unfolded in this latest Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) rotation was a window into the U.S. Army’s aggressive pivot toward fighting — and winning — in the 21st century.

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High-Tech Deception in the Pines

Knowing they were up against an opponent that understood the terrain and wielded cutting-edge detection methods, the soldiers of the 2nd Brigade came with a plan rooted in deception. Using inexpensive, palm-sized computers called “Raspberry Pis,” the 101st mimicked the electromagnetic signatures of command posts.

“We came in with a deception plan because we wanted to show the enemy that we were in a place where we weren’t so that he would commit forces into our strongest defenses and not into our weakest,” explained Capt. Charlie O’Hagan, commander of the 101st’s Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company.

By placing fake battalion and company headquarters throughout the southern area, the brigade tricked Geronimo into misallocating its surveillance and artillery.

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The maneuver gave one battalion precious time to hide and reposition, effectively masking its true location.

“The decoys forced the enemy to allocate resources such as [Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance] and fires to these decoys,” O’Hagan said. “That took away maneuver space and decision-making from the enemy commander.”

These decoys had a secondary advantage: they exposed the enemy’s positions.

“Ideally, they’ll use something in terms of artillery to destroy the decoy, which means the enemy unmasks his artillery. We can pick up on it, and then we can counter-fire his artillery,” O’Hagan added.

Image Credit: DoW

Learning from Ukraine

This exercise — and others like it — are not happening in a vacuum. The Army is digesting lessons from Ukraine, where small drones, electronic surveillance, and cyber warfare have altered the very character of modern conflict.

“Just the detection capabilities of an adversary with modern technology is changing the character of warfare,” said retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane, a Vietnam veteran and former Army vice chief of staff who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020.

Lt. Col. Mason Thornal, commander of the Geronimo opposition force, acknowledged that even they sometimes fall victim to the same vulnerabilities they aim to exploit.

“We got pulled into the fight. We got busy,” Thornal admitted. “I was static for too long, and I had a [Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company], small UAS appear over top of us. We had to displace.”

To counter the 101st’s improved sense-and-strike capabilities, Geronimo changed its infiltration strategy, splitting its movements into smaller groups to avoid detection.

“The takeaway is concealment, dispersion, camouflage, and displacement,” Thornal emphasized. These practices — once basic fieldcraft — are now essential for survival in a battlefield where even the faintest electronic signature can lead to death from above.

Thornal added that today’s soldiers must treat electromagnetic emission control the same way troops once approached noise or light discipline in previous wars: “Treating em-comm emissions control like noise and light discipline, those are the best ways to counter it.”

‘Transformation in Contact’

The Army’s training shift is part of Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George’s broader modernization plan called “Transformation in Contact.”

The goal is to inject new technology into field units early and often — even before it’s fully vetted by the traditional acquisition pipeline.

“We’re taking lessons from everywhere,” George said.

“We’re changing how we’re organized because I think that is what the current edition conditions require. We’re changing how we train and operate.”

Under the old model, units would define a need, send it up the chain, and wait years as defense contractors designed and tested a solution.

Now, George wants soldiers using the tech immediately and shaping its development through direct feedback.

“What we don’t want is to buy something and then say we’re going to have it for the next 20 years,” George said.

Still, bureaucratic hurdles remain. Keane, who sits on a congressional committee overseeing the National Defense Strategy, noted that the Army’s culture is adapting, but outdated procurement systems are slowing things down.

“The threat to the American people’s security is real, and we got a system that will not let this organization, the U.S. Army, the best land force in the world, catch up to the changing character of war,” Keane warned.

“We’re paralyzed. That’s the reality of what we’re facing.”

Even with Congress granting the Pentagon more flexibility in recent years, Keane said it’s not enough.

“This chief here is going to bang his head up against the wall trying to get these systems in the hands of his soldiers to face the threat that’s out there,” he said, referring to George.

Image Credit: DoW

New Formations, New Fights

One of the most dramatic changes underway is the Army’s shift toward smaller, more mobile, and more dispersed units.

This was evident during a simulated air assault, where the 101st Airborne realized massing helicopters in one place made them vulnerable to enemy targeting.

Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 101st, said this led to a strategic rethink. “We’re extremely vulnerable when we mass our aircraft. We can’t land at large airfields all at once,” he explained.

Brig. Gen. Bryan Babich, director of the Mission Command Center of Excellence, echoed the shift in mindset: “Because we’re distributed, we don’t have those big staffs with 24-hour battle rooms. You got to keep moving so it’s the human endurance factor as well.”

These new formations lean toward “mobile brigade combat teams.”

Where infantry brigades used to have over 4,300 soldiers, the new design trims them to under 3,000 — with increased reliance on unmanned systems and drones to regain mass and lethality.

“As we transition to a mobile brigade combat team, we take out many of those manned platforms and make them unmanned platforms with new constructs,” Sylvia said. “We’re able to trade steel for blood.”

The change affects more than size. Command and control will shift upward. Divisions, not brigades, will manage networks, freeing up smaller units to focus solely on tactics.

Soldiers will use Android-based devices with commercial connectivity like Starlink, instead of lugging around cumbersome radios.

O’Hagan described the future as a “one-stop shop” concept where soldiers can control drones, communicate, and analyze data from a single device.

But this mobility comes at a price. “Painfully light,” as O’Hagan called it, means fewer creature comforts — no air conditioning, less food and water, and fewer support assets.

A Glimpse of the Future

The JRTC exercise was just a slice of a much larger transformation. At Fort Liberty, the 20th Engineer Brigade is pioneering robotic breaching tactics.

The 3rd Infantry Division is experimenting with advanced drone swarms. The Army isn’t just talking about change — it’s building it from the ground up.

“In the last six months, just with this unit, we did that. We changed and we’ve adapted, and we’ve given them that technology,” George said.

“We’re adapting our processes so that we can do that faster in the future.”

The message from the Army’s leadership is clear: The next war will be won not by who has the most firepower, but by who can adapt the fastest.

From deception tactics and electronic discipline to streamlined command and drone-powered mobility, the U.S. Army is racing to rewrite its playbook — before it’s written for them.

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