Yesterday at 8:30 PM • Edited yesterday at 9:01 PM
The drone teams of the Royal Netherlands Army officially started with a special ceremony at the barracks in Oirschot. The teams are the first to arrive at the barracks in Vredepeel, Roosendaal and Oirschot. They learn to fight with and against drones.
“Kaboom!” A loud boom sounds across the barracks grounds. “Target disabled,” says a voice from a walkie-talkie. “Roger, out.” It’s a simulated drone attack, just like the real thing. Plumes of smoke rise.
The attack can be followed on a large video screen, which will be on a lawn of the barracks in Oirschot this Wednesday. There are rolls of honor on the drum of the Mounted Weapons Fanfare. Hundreds of soldiers are neatly lined up. Generals and guests such as members of the House of Representatives are seated.
Buzz
“Imagine this. You are standing in a trench and you hear nothing, except for the buzzing of a drone above your head. This is how Ukrainian soldiers describe the feeling that they are being hunted.”
General Jan Swillens emphasizes how topical this subject is. “If we have to fight later, our soldiers will operate under the threat of drones.” The top brass of the army talks about fighting smarter, keeping the enemy at bay, constantly innovating and ‘dominating the drone space’.
How do they do that? The Drones Task Force was set up for this purpose a year ago. General Joland Dubbeldam leads that team. “The war in Ukraine started in 2022 with a lot of artillery. The situation has completely changed. Eighty percent of the casualties are now caused by drones.”
On this day, Defense officially installs the first 200 soldiers in the drone teams. “The infantry units in the death zone had priority,” says General Dubbeldam.
Death zone units form the vanguard. Military personnel who are the first to go to a crisis area or conflict. For example, the units that help allies, such as the air defense of the barracks in Vredepeel, which is now in Poland.
They now also have drone teams at the command barracks in Roosendaal, at the 13 Light Brigade in Oirschot and a few other barracks outside Brabant. The rest will follow soon.
Rapid-fire cannon
The first 200 drone specialists will show themselves on this day. Most of them at a distance, to keep them anonymous, which is very common among defense employees. Defense does show the drones up close, such as the EOS-C. A five-meter wide reconnaissance drone that takes off straight.
He films how a small drone flies overhead. The rapid-fire cannon on a Bushmaster armored car springs into action, firing blanks. A small drone crashes on the lawn in front of the troops. As planned. Lifelike.
Machine gun
Two soldiers walk up to it, one aims a machine gun at the thing, the other aims a ‘jammer’, a jamming device. Cover it with a cloth to cover the camera from ‘the enemy’, and away it goes. These ‘drone catchers’ fall under the Limburg Hunters. They proudly hung their own flag on the Bushmaster car. The name Argus is written large on it, and the text danger from the sky. Above it a skull with two wings
Machine gun chatter sounds in the distance. People also practice on the Oirschotse heath. An Apache helicopter passes overhead. There’s more flying around today than just drones.
The plan is to grow the group of 200 to six hundred this year. Ultimately, that group must consist of 1,200 soldiers. “There are not enough yet, but we have started,” says General Swillens.
Defense has had drones for some time
Drones are in the news a lot, yet the defense department in Oirschot alone has been working with them for a long time. Like with the Raven for example. The Raven also sometimes appeared outside the barracks. For example, operators from Oirschot provided the police with aerial images on January 1, 2010 of the often turbulent New Year’s Eve in Veen.
Another well-known device is the Reaper MQ9. That unmanned aircraft can carry out missile attacks. They are stationed at Leeuwarden Air Base.
