The Army Just Killed Its Only Unit Learning From Ukraine. That's a Problem.

Here's what happened: Last year, Army leadership created the Unmanned Assault Battalion, a specialized unit trained to absorb lessons from drone warfare in Ukraine and deploy that knowledge across the force. This wasn't a luxury. Ukraine has shown the world that drones aren't a future weapon. They're the weapon, right now, and they're reshaping how wars are actually fought.

This week, the Army announced it's phasing out that unit. After an exercise wrapping up in September, the soldiers go back to being a regular airborne infantry battalion. The learning stops. The lessons collected from Ukraine get shelved.

Why? According to CBS News, the answer looks less like strategy and more like a turf war. Multiple current and former officials told the network that the decision came down to tension between the unit's champions, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Gen. Christopher Donahue, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, and Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the acting chief of staff. Both senior officers were pushed out. LaNeve moved up. The drone unit got axed.

This matters because it reveals something broken about how the military makes decisions. Ukraine is the biggest laboratory for modern warfare we're going to get in peacetime. Soldiers are learning what works and what doesn't in real time. The Army created a unit specifically to harvest that knowledge and bring it home. That's not ideology. That's common sense.

But instead of preserving that capacity, the Army is trading strategy for personality. A general with a grudge is dismantling a unit because of who built it, not because it doesn't work.

Why This Matters for Common Security

The Common Good Party's position on Ukraine and NATO is clear: Russia's invasion is an illegal war of aggression, and a sovereign nation's right to self-determination is not negotiable. That means we support Ukraine. It also means we learn from what Ukraine is teaching us about warfare in the 21st century.

Drones have become the dominant technology on that battlefield. They scout, strike, and coordinate. Every day brings new tactics, new vulnerabilities, new opportunities. The soldiers and officers who study this conflict have real intelligence that could save American lives if we're ever forced to defend ourselves or our allies.

Killing the unit that learns from Ukraine doesn't make the Army stronger. It makes it weaker. And it does so for reasons that have nothing to do with military readiness.

The Real Cost of Leadership by Personal Rivalry

The article describes months of simmering tension between LaNeve and Donahue, apparently rooted in an episode where LaNeve was "soft relieved" from commanding the 82nd Airborne Division ahead of schedule and then rushed out of his Fort Bragg house so the new commander could move in. That's an embarrassment. It's also not a reason to dismantle a unit studying the future of warfare.

LaNeve has published his vision in a document called "The Army Azimuth," which talks about soldiers focusing on fundamentals while incorporating new capabilities, including defending against drones. That's reasonable. But you can't defend against something you don't understand. And you don't understand it if you dissolve the unit learning how it works.

Retired General David Petraeus, quoted in the original reporting, said plainly: "There needs to be more drones." Not fewer lessons about drones. More of them, and more understanding of how to use them.

The Army Transformation Initiative that created this unit was supposed to emphasize unmanned systems as the future. Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said last year, "I don't think I've talked to a single person who has said we shouldn't be learning from what's occurring in Ukraine."

Apparently he hadn't talked to Gen. LaNeve.