The exercise, dubbed Operation Clear Horizon, took place in September 2025 at Eglin Air Force Base and aimed to replicate the conditions and weapons used on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“It helped us identify our priorities,” said Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, who leads Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Pentagon’s counter-drone center.
The simulated attack involved a range of drones, from small to large, many of them resistant to jamming and radar detection.
“We used fiber-optic-controlled drones… We used LTE, cellular-controlled drones, which allowed operators in Colorado to launch strikes on targets in Florida,” Ross said at the Sea-Air-Space event. He said the U.S. military used such tactics for the first time, and the effort to replicate the battlefield in Ukraine differed significantly from previous Pentagon approaches to drones.
Such capabilities were not used even during the T-REX exercises in Indiana in August or the FlyTrap drills in Germany in November 2025, Ross said. From September to December 2025, U.S. Defense Department units conducted 67 tests, he added.
The United States now has a unified software solution for tracking drones and an interface linking all services, Ross said.
In its fiscal 2027 budget proposal, the Pentagon is seeking $75 billion for new drone technologies, exceeding the current budget of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Operation Cobweb 2025
On June 1, 2025, Ukraine’s Security Service carried out a large-scale, unprecedented operation dubbed Cobweb targeting Russia’s strategic aviation.
On June 2, the SBU confirmed that simultaneous strikes on four military airfields deep inside Russia damaged 41 aircraft, including A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22M3 and Tu-160 planes.
Ukrainian drones struck the following airfields in Russia: Olenya in Murmansk Oblast, Belaya in Irkutsk Oblast, Dyagilevo in Ryazan Oblast, and Ivanovo in Ivanovo Oblast. The strike on Belaya marked the first Ukrainian attack on targets in Siberia.
The operation was prepared over a year and a half. The SBU first smuggled FPV drones into Russia, followed by mobile wooden structures. The drones were hidden under the roofs of the structures mounted on trucks. At the designated moment, the roofs were remotely opened and the drones launched to strike Russian bombers.
In January 2025, NV sources, citing Western intelligence, reported that even after six months Russia had been unable to compensate for the damage to its strategic aviation.