Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance-ISR

Lessons Learned

Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance or “ISR” has quickly become a mission requirement for most military operations. As in, little green men will not work without eyes in the sky unless the risk of inaction is found to be catastrophic. I flew in ISR assets during the GWOT, I completely understand why the shooters 1. preferred manned aircraft(faster radio callouts) 2. It’s much safer to move. The difference between a force with zero ISR capability VS a force with, is huge. The force with efficient ISR is going to be able to understand the battlefield ten fold over the team with no eyes other than their own.

The fighting in Ukraine has been mostly enabled by ISR. Quad-copters, proper military grade UAVs, and maybe even some manned aircraft assets are used all day, everyday. Everything from dropping hand grenades to getting coordinates for artillery. That spells trouble for a G-Unit with all of 5 guys if they’re lucky enough to have that many to fight. There is a huge need for small units to be able to field, control, and retrieve their own drones. If you plan on playing Varsity, you need a drone and an operator. This adds another hat to wear which for a lot of teams, is like having another rucksack and everyone is already maxed out on carrying weight. This is both a literal, and figurative problem.

There’s an App for that

Product considerations are huge with something like a drone. Cost is always the biggest, but you also need to consider flight time, battery charge time AND method, camera quality, and package delivery capability. In my research, most drones in the $200+ range can be equipped with the delivery system and have about a 1 hour flight time with a decent camera. You can save money but you’d only be getting about 20 minutes of flight time per charge. This doesn’t sound very useful to a small unit in the woods. Great Christmas gift for the next generation to practice on, though. Another consideration is the data transmission range. If you can only use the live camera function for 80 meters, that’s not very useful. Not useless, but we can do better, gentlemen.

Units cannot just move in the woods like it’s a Sunday fun-day trail hike. I’ve been lucky to cover 200 meters while remaining quite(no such thing as silent) and hidden in the woods. The enemy could be anywhere, so it’d be nice to take a quick flight in your intended direction to recon the situation. To mitigate your drone being detected, just like your radio transmissions, keep it short and too the point. This not only reduces the physical ‘footprint’ from the noise and movement in an environment that is typically quite, it reduces your electromagnetic footprint. When that drone is being controlled, there is a two-way connection, meaning not 1, but 2 near constant transmissions occurring.

Brushbeater’s Tactical Signals Exploitation course will be featuring a drone in combination with Direction Finding emitters. We as armed citizens cannot sit by and assume you’ll encounter a high speed unit with cool toys. As a team, the new standard is to be able to see further, wider, and more than your scope or naked eye could ever view. Signal DF and drones appear to be those new eyes and ears. We can teach you how to effectively and efficiently employ this new gear into your unit. Mission planning takes a lot of critical thought which takes a lot of common sense. In my experience, most people think about it too much and things become overly complex. Not only will you learn how to employ these skills, we’ll be discussing how professional forces use ISR and how to not get “slap chopped”.