Over the smoking sands of Iraq, the military is coming to rely on formations of 20-foot drones, working with Apache attack helicopters against the Islamic State. Such operations have just pushed the Textron Shadow UAV past 1 million flight hours, becoming the first of the Army’s mid-range, or Group III drones, to hit that milestone.The Army is now talking publicly about the first heavy attack reconnaissance squadron to deploy and return with the Apache-Shadow combination, the service’s Shadow product manager told reporters in a conference call on Monday. That would be 3-6 Cavalry out of Fort Bliss, Texas, which returned from Iraq two weeks ago.
