• US Army officials said the drone experimentation role of one of its battalions was always meant to be temporary.
• The decision to phase out the drone focus confused experts and lawmakers alike.
• The Army's priority is to democratize drone warfare lessons and tactics across formations.

The US Army says that its special battalion focused on drone warfare and lessons from Ukraine was always meant to be a temporary experiment, not a lasting element of the force.

The Unmanned Assault Battalion was created last fall as an experimental unit in the 173rd Airborne Brigade specializing in drone tactics. The 3rd Battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment was tasked with testing uncrewed systems and developing battlefield lessons the Army could apply more broadly.

When news broke last month that the service intended to phase out the battalion's drone-focused mission and return it to airborne infantry, with a focus on traditional warfighting, the move prompted questions about why the Army was ending the experiment and concerns about its wider approach to drone warfare.

At an Army modernization media roundtable on Wednesday, Army officials said that the shift had been planned from the beginning and presented how they intend to spread lessons on uncrewed aerial systems across the service.

"They were never flagged to be a permanent centralized drone unit," Alex Miller, the Army's chief technology officer, told reporters.

"In fact, we pushed back on having something like a drone corps since its inception because our theory of the case is, if you centralize that in one place, what you lose is the ability to actually scale that learning and send that out to the rest of the Army," he added.

The plan, Miller said, was for the battalion to test uncrewed technologies and learn tactics in the six to seven months before they received their full infantry battalion equipment. Then, the Army would disseminate those takeaways across the service and the troops from the battalion would return to their role as airborne infantry.

When The Wall Street Journal first reported the change, an Army spokesperson said the service was committed to "drone dominance" but did not comment on future plans. The Journal reported that no end date was specified when the battalion's drone role was established.

At the time, an Army spokesperson told Business Insider the unit's findings would inform force design and future experimentation.

The reporting on the plans to phase out the battalion's drone mission raised concerns among defense analysts and lawmakers, who questioned what the decision signaled about the Army's commitment to drone warfare, the service's willingness to learn from Ukraine's warfighting experiences, and broader Pentagon priorities for uncrewed capabilities.

"We have deep concerns that eliminating this specialized drone unit will limit our ability to learn from allies, particularly the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and hinder our efforts to modernize drone warfare at the speed necessary to compete on the modern battlefield," US lawmakers wrote in a recent letter to Army leadership.

The letter added that "this specialized unit was a prudent response in a moment when the character of warfare is changing faster than a conventional formation's ability to adapt."

The Army didn't explain publicly that the drone mission was always intended as a short-term experiment when the planned change first drew criticism weeks ago, but officials said Wednesday they wanted to clarify.

"We're sort of combating this narrative that we set something new up, and then we killed that new thing, and we're going to sacrifice it at the altar of technology," Miller said. "That's just not true."

He argued that spreading lessons across the Army rather than concentrating drone expertise in a permanent unit better fits the goal of making uncrewed systems a routine part of how the larger force fights.

"When we engage with the Ukrainians and we engage with their leadership, it was less a drone corps and was more of one platoon per company, one company per battalion, which looked an awful lot like how we were actually setting up our tactical UAS platoons as a formation anyway," he said.

The Army rejected the idea that ending the battalion's drone-focused mission represents a step backward in its efforts to integrate uncrewed capabilities.

"We are not slowing down on drones or autonomous systems, and we are not walking away from them," Miller said.

Other officials, likewise, said that drone capabilities are continuing to spread across formations regardless.

"We are employing unmanned aircraft systems at all levels," said Brent Ingraham, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics, and technology, adding that "while there was an experimental drone battalion, we are scaling that capability across the entire Army."

Moving forward, the Army says it has several methods for sharing drone lessons and tips, including a Combined Arms Services platform that acts as a central repository for lessons from different soldiers and units.

• Apple unveiled the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max.
• The phones will cost $100 more than the previous iPhone 17 Pro models.
• Apple also hiked the prices on older models.

Your next iPhone is going to cost you. And if you didn't buy an existing model before Wednesday, you're going to pay more too.

On Tuesday, Apple announced the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max — with price tags $100 higher than the previous Pro models. It also announced the new foldable iPhone Duo, priced at $1,999. Apple has yet to announce the entry-level iPhone 18.

That wasn't the only pricing news. Apple also raised the price of older iPhones by $100, going back to the iPhone 16, the oldest generation that Apple still sells new in its online store.

The increase means that the iPhone Air, which Apple launched nearly a year ago, is now more expensive ($1,099) than it was when it debuted at $999. This is also true for the iPhone 17e and iPhone 17, which are now $699 and $899, respectively.

The iPhone 16 is $799, restoring it back to its debut price when Apple launched it in September 2024.

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models will be available with 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage capacities. The 2TB version of the Pro model costs $2399, and the Pro Max 2TB phone will run you $2499.

Both prices are above those of the 2TB iPhone 17 Pro Max, the previous most expensive iPhone on the market. Both of the top-of-the-line iPhone 18s still pale in comparison to the highest-tier iPhone Duo. The 2TB iPhone Duo will cost $3199.

The higher prices illustrate how the global memory shortage has stretched a company as dominant as Apple.

In his final earnings call as CEO, Tim Cook said that Apple had "reluctantly raised prices" of iPads and MacBooks due to the memory shortage.

"We did it because we're in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on the memory pricing with exponential increases in memory prices," Cook said.

The memory shortage is largely driven by the AI revolution as chipmakers shift production away from chips designed for consumer products to the more specialized chips required for the data centers that power AI models.

In June, Apple increased the prices of iPads by up to 25% and Mac computers by as much as 20%. At the time, the cost of existing iPhone models remained unchanged.

Other companies, including some of Apple's competitors, have also hiked device prices.

Officials at Samsung and Google have said they raised prices on some of their smartphone models in part due to rising memory costs.

"There's never been an increase in memory prices like the world's going through right now," Google's vice president of devices and services, Shakil Barkat, said in July ahead of the release of the Pixel 11.

Ultimately, Google tacked $100 onto the Pixel 11, though it also doubled the storage of the baseline edition as Google discontinued the 128GB model.

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will be available for preorder on Saturday, September 12, and then will go on sale on September 18.

• Ukrainian soldiers are spending longer periods in combat areas.
• The heavy drone saturation has made it difficult to leave the front lines for medical care.
• One unit said that soldiers must have treatment options brought forward in response.

The threat of Russian drones is keeping Ukrainian troops stuck near the front for longer stretches and forcing the military to think more about how it delivers medical care to soldiers who can't easily leave.

For one Ukrainian military unit that specializes in front-line casualty evacuation, the lesson is that battlefield medicine now has to do more than stabilize the wounded and get them out.

Soldiers in combat areas for extended periods need access to outpatient care, diagnostics, specialist consultations, and treatment for both chronic and acute illnesses without being forced to leave the battlefield every time they need medical assistance, Ukraine's 1st Separate Medical Battalion told Business Insider.

A battalion spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons, said in translated remarks that modern combat medicine is developing in two main directions: using machines to replace troops and evacuate casualties wherever possible and pushing high-quality medical care closer to troops at the front.

The front lines have evolved into what Ukrainian officials and soldiers describe as a "kill zone." Drones are constantly watching and able to target anything that moves, including soldiers and armored vehicles, with precision. The aerial threat has made it difficult and time-consuming to move even short distances.

The kill zone varies in size, extending for miles on both sides of the line of contact, and Ukrainian officials and soldiers say it is expanding as more drones flood the battlefield.

The battalion spokesperson said the growing number of drones is forcing the unit to change its approach to casualty evacuation, stabilization sites, and forward surgical teams.

The unit must become more mobile and less visible, moving between locations faster, the spokesperson said.

Ground robots, meanwhile, are increasingly being used for casualty evacuation, reflecting a growing trend across the Ukrainian military in which machines are replacing soldiers for dangerous missions such as logistics.

The battalion spokesperson said that access to sophisticated medical equipment is also critical, though the most advanced equipment is not always the most useful. Any system brought forward must be suitable for rugged, front-line conditions, meaning that it must be mobile, autonomous, easy to maintain, and have a sufficient support chain.

In some cases, a reliable, self-sufficient device may be more valuable to the unit than a more advanced system that isn't designed for the battlefield, the spokesperson said.

More generally, heavy drone saturation in Ukraine has upended long-standing assumptions about combat casualty care.

Delayed casualty evacuation, for instance, stands in stark contrast to the model US and allied forces relied on in the post-9/11 wars, when US and coalition forces could leverage their air superiority to helicopter wounded soldiers to large, fully equipped bases.

Western military leaders are increasingly warning that they might not have these same advantages in a future war against a near-peer adversary such as Russia.

In Ukraine, drones have made it difficult to deliver medical care to wounded soldiers within the "golden hour," the first 60 minutes after a severe injury, when rapid treatment can be critical to survival.

NATO is increasingly aware that it could face similar challenges and has looked to Western medical and defense industries for technology that could help save lives in a drone-infested environment.