Army to soldiers: Get small drones back in the air, don’t worry about the red tape (as much)

A soldier flies a Red Cat quadcopter in this artist’s rendering. (Red Cat)

WASHINGTON — The US Army is preparing a new memo to clarify the rules for flying — and losing — smaller drones in hopes of convincing soldiers and commanders that they need not fear paperwork so much that they leave the surveillance and weapons systems on shelves, officials told Breaking Defense.

In October Breaking Defense reported that in the middle of a drone-dominated revolution in ground combat, some US servicemembers were hesitant to power up smaller unmanned aerial system (UAS), fearful of the seemingly inevitable “non-expendable property” investigation that would come if a break in communications, dead battery, gust of wind or sturdy tree limb took the UAS out of commission down range.

“If you lose [a drone] or crash it or break it, you have to do this full-on investigation, an investigating officer has to be appointed,” Col. Nick Ryan, director of the Army Capability Manager for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, said in the original report. “They do a full investigation [and] a report, to determine if the soldier is liable, and if the soldier … has to get docked pay.”

One drone, Ryan said then, was known as “the flying FLIPL and they never wanted to fly it.” FLIPL stands for Financial Liability Investigation of Property Loss.

To avoid such a fate, soldiers may put themselves at risk in combat zones to recover the platforms, Ryan said.

Moreover, the formal investigation can cost more than the drone itself. Greg Besaw, a senior logistics staff officer, told Breaking Defense recently that the service can spend between $8,000 and $9,000 for a sergeant first class to devote their time to each investigation — presumably even for drones that cost a fraction of that.

“Is it worth the cost of the loss to spend this much administrative time, people’s salaries, simply to document a six-step financial liability investigation?” he asked.

Today unmanned aerial systems are deemed “nonexpendable property” and the Department of Defense at large requires property books accounting for everything over $5,000 (that is included in DoDI 5000.64). That’s even though the Army says that only UAS in its arsenal without “sensitive items” that falls under that threshold and has asked the Office of the Secretary of Defense to reexamine that price point.

And now Army officials are also clarifying that those property loss investigations, while ubiquitous, aren’t actually always mandatory, and that commanders have more leeway than they might think for simply writing the loss off and saving everyone the hassle. The officials told Breaking Defense they are inking a new All Army Activities (ALARACT) memo, expected within the month, that will make clear there are already other options for “unretrievable UAS and equipment.”

“That will lay out essentially the requirements for each of these [UAS] and give some examples” for when to just write off the loss in an abandonment memo and when to pursue a formal investigation, according to Sydney Smith, the director of supply policy and programs inside Army headquarters.

Smith told Breaking Defense that in cases where it’s clear that negligence or misconduct was not the cause of the UAS loss, the memo will detail each drone’s dollar figure and any sensitive items it contains to help commanders make better decisions on how to proceed. It will also reaffirm details about the rank needed to make such a decision.

For example, when a done below $10,000 with non-sensitive items crashes into the woods, then a GS-14 (lieutenant colonel) can sign the abandonment memo instead of launching a FLIPL investigation. If that UAS is below $250,000, then a GS-15 (colonel) can make the call. But anything above $250,000 or with a “controlled item code,” means a general officer will be called in.

“We’ve had tools for a long, long time that have allowed commanders to not have to go through the onerous process, but when you look at our main regulation on the AR 735- 5 [Army property accountability manual], it puts the liability chapters first,” Smith said. “It makes people think, ‘Oh, I must do the FLIPL for these things’ … when, in reality, they could do the abandonment order because they’re not able to retrieve [the UAS] because it was lost in a field environment.”

Another reason the investigations have become so common in the first place, Smith added, is a cautious culture that has not kept up with the times.

“When we first got the Shadows [UASs], and so forth, in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were occasional cases where something would fly over into other territories and they were exploited,” she said. “I think that’s where so much of the reticence to just saying, ‘I want to write off a UAS’ came from. And that’s sort of built up over the years. … Our culture [is] almost a presumption of guilt, ‘now prove that it’s not.’”

Beyond the memo, Besaw and Smith are now helping usher in a new edition of that accountability policy manual to be released later this fall. In it, the initial chapters will layout all of the non-liability actions that can be taken, before later sections progress towards that FLIPL investigation.

With the memo and the revised manual, both officials said soldiers should feel better about putting drones in the air, as modern combat is increasingly demanding.

“[The] problem set of UAS is very different now than it was then” in Iraq and Afghanistan, Smith said. “The technology is not unusual anymore.

“When you think about the way Ukraine is using UAS … if we were in that scenario, even if they were expensive, we would be writing a memorandum to say, ‘You know, I launched 100 UAS, and 15 came back, and I watched them on a combat mission, and they didn’t return.’ That would be my relief statement,” she added. “We have got to get the muscle memory going on that, so that people understand it will be acceptable in the future to do that.”