Half the drones in a recent US Army combat exercise were designed to be expendable

The war in Ukraine has shown the value of soldiers having a lot of drones they can expend without worrying about replacing them.

US Army photo by Staff Sgt.

Trevin Rund US Army soldiers used about 2,000 attack drones in a recent exercise.

Half of those systems were designed to be consumable and used like ammunition.

Army officials and leaders have said small, low-cost drones are more useful in larger volumes.

The US Army brought thousands of drones to a recent combat exercise, and roughly half were designed to be expendable.

Soldiers could use and lose the drones in the fight, treating them like ammunition.

The Army's shift toward using low-cost drones has relied on amassing enough systems to make them expendable.

It's getting tens of thousands of drones to soldiers through the Drone Dominance Program, the goal being that soldiers use these systems without worrying about quickly coming up empty.

At the recent Saber Junction exercise in Germany, Army soldiers used approximately 1,900 autonomous systems.

"Those numbers continue to increase every rotation, and we will continue to increase them in future rotations," Maj.

Gen.

Christopher Norrie, acting commander of US Army Europe and Africa, told reporters at a roundtable on Thursday, which Business Insider received a transcript of.

Of those roughly 2,000 drones used during the exercise, "1,000 were consumable," Brig.