The U.S. Army has launched a new unit called Task Force Easy, aimed at helping the military adopt and adapt drone technology faster, officials announced at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting.
The task force, led by Col. Michael Payne, will focus on small unmanned aircraft systems, first-person-view one-way attack drones, and small unmanned ground vehicles. Rather than pursuing a numbers advantage, it seeks to fix a deeper problem: the U.S. military’s slow adaptation to new technology.
“We are slower and less efficient. We have not been able to outpace our adversaries and threats in adapting to new technology,” Payne said during a panel discussion. “We are trying to fix that within the task force.”
Task Force Easy originally fell under the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, which has now transitioned into Joint Task Force-Autonomous Warfare, reporting directly to the Unmanned Systems Portfolio Management Office. Officials say this flatter structure is meant to shorten the path from identifying a need to fielding a capability.
Payne stressed that the measure of future combat is not what technology is bought, but how fast it can be adopted, adapted, changed, and employed in new ways. To that end, Task Force Easy is working to compress adaptation cycles from months to hours or days.
Operationally, the task force will lead the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s Project Swarm Forge, which aims to deliver collaborative autonomy at the edge. It will also stand up dedicated drone training teams to write the latest tactics, techniques, and procedures, and to support operational assessments of new gear at combat training centers.
Payne returned repeatedly to one core judgment: “The solution is not just drone dominance it is adaptation dominance.” In an era of cheap, widely proliferated drones, the platform itself is no longer scarce. What is scarce, officials acknowledge, is the organizational ability to learn, update, and field improved versions faster than an opponent.
