It looks like jam-proof drones, a Ukraine war battlefield scourge, showed up at the US Navy’s Silent Swarm exercise

Jamming-resistant, fiber-optic drones showed up during a recent US Navy exercise focused on electronic warfare.

Fiber-optic drones, featuring a hard wire between the system and the operator instead of a radio frequency connection, have become a prominent counter to electronic warfare, like signal jamming, happening on both sides of the Ukraine war.

Last month, the Navy led the Silent Swarm exercise in Michigan, a training focused on emerging warfare technologies like small uncrewed aerial vehicles and surface vehicles, as well as using and countering electronic warfare capabilities.

Photos posted by the Michigan National Guard, which were first spotted and reported on by The War Zone, show what looks like a fiber-optic drone sitting on a rocky beach. The small, black quadcopter drone is equipped with a spool for a fiber-optic cable.

Another photo shows another drone with a spool sitting on a table at the exercise, as well as an Xbox-like controller next to it. Other UAVs were also present, as well as uncrewed ground vehicles featuring four wheels parked in the sand on the beach.

Silent Swarm involved some 50 defense companies and had the Navy, Michigan National Guard, and other participants use swarms of drones to simulate attacks on locations in Thunder Bay, according to a Guard press release on the exercise. Data and feedback were gathered to provide insights into which systems were the most effective.

“The hypothesis for Silent Swarm is to identify those systems that can outmatch and have an impact in the most challenging environments,” said Rob Gamburg, the project lead for Silent Swarm at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane), according to the release.

The military didn’t explicitly identify the drone present as fiber-optic drones, and the National Guard didn’t immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for clarity. But the spools are a giveaway. Their apparent involvement in the exercise is notable given their growing use in Ukraine.

Russia first introduced these drones as a way to bypass signal jamming on the battlefield, which became a prominent countermeasure for breaking the connection between the drone and operator, shutting down video feeds, and causing drones dependent on radio frequencies to malfunction.

Both Ukraine and Russia have since ramped up their use of fiber-optic drones, leaving some battlefields littered with discarded cables. Immune to jamming, these drones can deliver precise strikes at ranges of more than 40 kilometers, and manufacturers are already working to push that distance even further.

For the soldiers on the ground facing these threats, the way to bring them down is kinetic. One of the best options for stopping these drones is a shotgun, which requires a lot of luck and precise timing. The fiber-optic drones can also get hung up in trees or caught in battlefield debris.

The US military recognizes it’s behind and is embracing the challenges of adapting to drone warfare. Common mistakes, such as accidentally getting a quadcopter caught in a shrub or not bringing enough spare parts to the field, are being made openly. It’s acknowledged as a work in progress.

The Army has been pushing hard to incorporate drones across units, investing in counter-drone capabilities, and has recently started a crash course aimed at catching soldiers up on the technology. The Marines are interested as well, turning to the Corps’ new attack drone team to pull in lessons from Ukraine.

Broadly, across the Department of Defense, there are efforts to implement new drone warfare capabilities to better prepare the force for future fights where drones could be prolific in battle.

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