U.S. National Guard Approves FPV Strike Drones for Soldier Training in Modern Drone Warfare.

The Tennessee Army National Guard is seeking small first-person-view strike drones for training at its 117th Regional Training Institute in Smyrna under a small-business set-aside contract. The move reflects a broader U.S. military effort to incorporate lessons from modern drone warfare into soldier training and tactical operations.

The Tennessee Army National Guard is moving to buy a new class of first-person-view strike drones that would give its schoolhouse a low-cost, tactically relevant platform for training soldiers to find, track, and attack targets inside the compressed kill chain now shaping modern land combat. The solicitation, issued for the 117th Regiment Regional Training Institute at Smyrna, seeks two small unmanned aircraft systems under contract number W912L726QA003, with delivery required within 30 days of award. The requirement is structured as a 100 percent small-business set-aside and explicitly ties the purchase to National Guard authorization, signaling that this is not an ad hoc buy but part of a wider institutional push to inject current drone warfare lessons into Guard training.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

The Tennessee Army National Guard is acquiring small FPV strike drones to train soldiers in reconnaissance, target engagement, and GPS-denied operations, reflecting the growing battlefield importance of low-cost tactical UAS (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The aircraft must be a 5-inch-class FPV quadcopter with a 157 mm rotor base and 90 mm propellers, weigh no more than 3 pounds, remain airborne for at least 12 minutes, and maintain command and control to a minimum of 10 kilometers through an ExpressLRS link. That combination indicates a highly maneuverable, short-range strike-and-reconnaissance airframe optimized for speed, low cost, and rapid handling rather than long-endurance overwatch. In practical terms, it is the kind of drone suited to terrain masking, tree-line penetration, trench approach, and fast terminal attack profiles where seconds matter more than endurance.

The technical package goes further and reveals what the Guard actually wants soldiers to learn. The drone must hold position in GPS-denied conditions, carry integrated electro-optical and infrared sensors with thermal capability for low-light work, include an AI-enabled flight computer, and natively integrate with Android Team Awareness Kit so that live ISR feeds can move directly onto the tactical network. ATAK is already used across the force as a geospatial collaboration and situational awareness tool, and the Army continues to treat it as a key enabler for real-time command and control at lower echelons. Paired with a dual redundant 915 MHz ELRS Gemini control system, AES-256-encrypted digital HD video, and dual-band 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz operation, the solicitation is effectively demanding a drone that can survive contested spectrum conditions better than hobby-grade FPV systems while still giving the operator a near-instant pilot’s-eye view through goggles or external displays.

The armament side of the story is equally important, even if the Tennessee notice does not yet specify a warhead, fuse, or payload weight. The document describes the buy as an sUAS drone assembly, not a complete munitionized weapon, which suggests the Guard is procuring the air vehicle and digital strike architecture first, while lethal payload integration may be handled under separate authorities or training protocols. That aligns with the Army’s broader lethality work. DEVCOM Armaments Center has already advanced modular lethal UAS payloads such as AUDIBLE for droppable munitions and Shank, formerly Project Shiv, for one-way FPV missions using an existing explosively formed penetrator warhead with built-in measures for safe engagement. The Army has also tested armed FPV drones in live fire and even demonstrated an air-to-air kill using an armed FPV platform in 2025.

This gives the National Guard something it has lacked for too long: a realistic bridge between classroom drone familiarization and the violent, low-altitude, short-notice drone fight now seen across contested theaters. A thermal-equipped FPV system with encrypted video and 10 km control range can scout dead ground, check urban corners, identify vehicles under camouflage, and push live imagery to leaders before a squad or convoy commits itself. In a strike role, the same airframe type can rehearse rapid target prosecution, route denial, hasty anti-armor ambush concepts, and counter-UAS intercept tactics. GPS-denied hold and redundant control matter because the tactical lesson is no longer simply how to fly a drone, but how to keep flying when jamming, masking, and network disruption are part of the fight.

The 117th RTI is a logical place for that capability. Army reporting shows the Smyrna-based institute trains military police and other personnel from the Army National Guard, Army Reserve, and active component, making it a multiplier for doctrine transfer rather than a niche user. Other Guard schoolhouses are moving in the same direction. Pennsylvania’s 166th RTI is already running sUAS operator courses for large-scale combat scenarios and folding drones into artillery and leader training, Oregon’s 249th RTI has expanded advanced UAS instruction with newer systems, and Georgia has launched a dedicated drone operator pipeline to push low-cost autonomous systems into units more quickly. In that context, Tennessee’s FPV buy looks less like an isolated procurement and more like another node in a distributed National Guard drone modernization network.

There is also a security and industrial-base message in the solicitation. Any aircraft offered must appear on the Blue UAS Cleared List, and the contract incorporates current prohibitions tied to covered foreign entities. DIU has described the Blue UAS list as a pool of cyber-secure, NDAA-compliant, government-approved drones, and by late 2025, the effort had already certified more than 39 systems and 165 components before management began transitioning to DCMA. For the Guard, that means the training fleet is being built around supply-chain-vetted systems that can be legally purchased, securely operated, and potentially scaled across the force without the policy complications surrounding foreign-made commercial drones.

The larger significance is that the National Guard no longer has the luxury of treating FPV strike drones as an experimental sideshow. Guard formations are increasingly expected to mobilize into large-scale combat, homeland defense, border-support, and partner-training missions where drone literacy is becoming as basic as radio discipline or land navigation. This buy is small in quantity, but it is large in signal. It tells industry the Guard wants secure, networked, tactically useful FPV systems, and it tells the force that tomorrow’s schoolhouse must teach not only how to survive under drones, but how to fight with them.