OKLAHOMA CITY - Competitors found themselves facing a new challenge at Oklahoma's 2024 Best Warrior Competition when they were introduced to an emerging and rapidly growing threat many of them haven't faced.

The competitors were given 20 minutes to enter a heavily wooded area and tasked with camouflaging themselves before several of the sergeants major supporting the event began searching for them. What the competitors were unaware of is the sergeants major would be aided by multiple unmanned aircraft systems, commonly referred to as drones, coordinated by the Oklahoma National Guard Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems School.



The drones searched for the Guardsmen from various heights, peering through Camp Gruber's dense foliage with infrared cameras, and at one point used a small first-person-view UAS to fly below the canopy level.

Formed in 2023, the Oklahoma National Guard's Counter Unmanned Aircraft School has introduced new ways to train and learn for units across the state.

Col. Shane Riley, the director of military support for the Oklahoma National Guard, which oversees the cUAS School, said the event was included to challenge the Soldiers and NCOs to take that feeling of uneasiness back to their units and begin talking with fellow Guardsmen about the threats UAS pose on modern battlefields.



"What we intend to be able to do here is bring solutions and techniques to Soldiers and expose leaders to this environment now so that they're competitive down the road," Riley said. "This will enhance our ability to be competitive overseas and enhance our ability to respond to domestic events, by both understanding the airspace management, the protection assets and the interagency cooperation that has to occur for us to be able to operate in this environment safely and effectively.”

The Oklahoma National Guard cUAS School, along with Riley, are working to expose service members at every level to techniques, tactics, procedures that can be utilized now and in the the future.

"It makes us adapt,” said Noncommissioned Officer of the Year, Staff Sgt. Brock Wilson, an Oklahoma City resident serving in the 120th Medical Company (Area Support), 120th Engineer Battalion, 90th Troop Command. “Adapting and evolving and implementing challenges into competitions like this is one of the first steps to really growing our skill set as an Army."