HOHENFELS, Germany (AP) \u2014 On a moonless and rainy night, a group of soldiers emerged from a ramshackle building meant to resemble a church. The alpine terrain loomed over them as they quietly set off for the tree line of the German countryside a short distance away.<\/p>\n
The soldiers are members of the Polish special forces and are taking part in an exercise designed only months ago that simulates moving through enemy lines, traversing miles of enemy territory and launching a\u00a0drone strike on a key enemy location<\/a>.<\/p>\n Initially designed by the Army\u2019s Green Berets for U.S. special forces, the exercise that began Friday is informed by and simulates many of the\u00a0challenges that Ukrainian troops have experienced<\/a>\u00a0in their\u00a0conflict with Russia<\/a>. It is the first time a NATO ally like Poland has undertaken the training, and it comes at a time when tensions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and NATO countries\u00a0have escalated<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re using lessons learned from Ukraine,\u201d an Army Green Beret officer assigned to the training complex said Thursday. \u201cAll of those effects that we\u2019re seeing either Russia or Ukraine having to overcome \u2014 we\u2019re doing our best to replicate.\u201d<\/p>\n The Associated Press received rare access to both the training ground and the troops conducting the exercise, which has only been conducted twice before, both times this year, by two different Green Beret teams.<\/p>\n The drill highlights the focus that some parts of the U.S. military have on\u00a0learning the latest techniques in drone warfare<\/a>, pioneered by Ukraine during its 4 1\/2-year effort to repel Russian forces. It also shows how the U.S., its NATO allies and Ukraine are working together to counter the threat of\u00a0possible further Russian action in coming years<\/a>\u00a0even as the Trump administration has warned of\u00a0troop drawdowns in Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n CIA Director John\u00a0Ratcliffe went to Moscow<\/a>\u00a0this week to warn Russia not to attack NATO countries,\u00a0The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>. Russia has the appetite to conduct\u00a0sabotage and cyberattacks<\/a>\u00a0against NATO countries, but Putin wants to avoid\u00a0a direct confrontation<\/a>, according to three Western officials, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.<\/p>\n How special forces are learning to sneak behind enemy lines to deploy drones<\/p>\n During the exercise in Germany, a senior enlisted soldier familiar with the training scenario at Joint Multinational Readiness Center Hohenfels \u2014 about an hour\u2019s drive southeast from Nuremberg \u2014 said the plan is to run it several times a year. The officer said he expects most, if not all, of the 32 NATO nations to express interest in sending their troops to try the exercise.<\/p>\n Both spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the U.S. military\u2019s longstanding policy of not publicly identifying individual members of special forces units.<\/p>\n The scenario, which runs for several days, takes place on a large, 1,100-square-mile (3,000-square-kilometer) plot of land nestled in the Bavarian countryside.<\/p>\n Poland\u2019s special forces will be expected to sneak past a U.S. Army airborne infantry unit, whose soldiers will play the enemy. The U.S. airborne infantry unit will parachute into the closed-off training area at the Army\u2019s Hohenfels base and set themselves up into a front line.<\/p>\n Assuming the Polish forces can make their way past the U.S. Army, they must then move north \u2014 through about 60 miles (100 kilometers) of German countryside \u2014 to another training area in the town of Grafenwoehr, where they are expected to destroy a simulated target.<\/p>\n In between lie German farms and villages, private and government cameras, as well as a city with a large population, all of which not only pose as obstacles but also create the potential for them to be spotted.<\/p>\n The senior enlisted soldier said that in previous instances of the exercise, the Army Green Berets removed their uniforms \u201cso they can blend in\u201d before adding that \u201cblend in also means don\u2019t get seen by civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n German civilians in the area largely are not aware of the exercise and serve as a reasonable test of how well special forces can blend into the local population. If they fail, reports of suspicious people to police will make it back to the military, which will use them to pinpoint the team.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is supposed to be Russia and you\u2019re going to stand out in Russia,\u201d the enlisted soldier added.<\/p>\n Plus, the U.S. Army also will be looking for the Polish forces with drones of their own.<\/p>\n If they\u2019re spotted, \u201cnow you have the entire Russian arsenal coming at you,\u201d the enlisted soldier said.<\/p>\n The U.S. Army can either send a military police unit to hunt for the Polish special forces with dogs or direct more drones to the area. In previous versions of the exercise, the U.S. Army had access to more than a hundred drones, the enlisted soldier said.<\/p>\n Troops are able to be \u201ccaptured or killed\u201d as part of the training.<\/p>\n Countries seek help from Ukraine on drone warfare<\/p>\n While the exercise taps into drones and NATO teamwork, the message of collaboration and the value of drones has been somewhat mixed lately across the military.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u00a0stirred confusion among NATO<\/a>\u00a0allies by going back and forth on\u00a0drawing down U.S. troop levels<\/a>\u00a0in Europe, and the administration has\u00a0launched a force review<\/a>\u00a0on next steps. And last week, the Army\u2019s top officer\u00a0shuttered a unit that specialized<\/a>\u00a0in drone warfare.<\/p>\n But overall, there is growing interest in tapping Ukraine for its expertise on modern warfare and, specifically, drones.<\/p>\n In March, Ukrainian<\/a>\u00a0President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country was helping five countries in the Middle East and Gulf region counter Iranian drone attacks launched during the war with the United States, while the U.S. and European countries were among those requesting support.<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0the number of mysterious drone incursions<\/a>\u00a0in Europe have grown, including as recently as this month, when a pair of drones were spotted over a German military base and\u00a0a drone carrying explosives<\/a>\u00a0was found at a key cargo airport in Germany.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Associated Press writer Emma Burrows in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOHENFELS, Germany (AP) \u2014 On a moonless and rainy night, a group of soldiers emerged from a ramshackle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2905,704,12252,43,12253,101,500,8159,195,12254,7158,66,56,12255,25,5273,3294,11884,12256,33,152],"class_list":["post-35305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cia","tag-conflict","tag-cyberattacks","tag-donald-trump","tag-drone-incursions","tag-drone-strike","tag-drone-warfare","tag-escalation","tag-germany","tag-hohenfels","tag-john-ratcliffe","tag-nato","tag-poland","tag-polish-special-forces","tag-russia","tag-sabotage","tag-training","tag-ukrainian-troops","tag-us-green-berets","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}