en.Wedoany.com Reported - The U.S. Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment produced counter-UAS mounts, brackets, and other components on-site through its organic Additive Manufacturing Platoon during Exercise Flytrap 5.0, a counter-Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) exercise held at the Pabradė Training Area in Lithuania. This addressed the lack of off-the-shelf solutions for integrating commercial equipment with military platforms. The exercise, led by V Corps in conjunction with the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, the British 3rd Parachute Battalion, and allied and industry partners, conducted live-fire assessments of both program-of-record and commercially provided counter-UAS systems against small UAS threats, including swarms.

Beyond the counter-UAS mission, the regiment's subordinate Additive Manufacturing Platoon focused on producing the mounts, brackets, and other hardware required to install vendor-supplied counter-UAS equipment onto Stryker combat vehicles. No off-the-shelf solutions existed for these components in the field. According to Maj. Galen King, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment's Executive Officer, the platoon is equipped with additive and subtractive manufacturing tools such as lathes and 3D printers; throughout the exercise, they not only repaired and restored drones used in training but also produced multiple critical equipment parts. King described the workflow as identifying subcomponent requirements, modeling them using CAD software, and producing functional parts without a formal supply chain, thereby providing an "80 percent solution" that meets roughly eighty percent of the need and effectively bridges the gap between commercial equipment and military platforms.

The platoon has a precedent for organic manufacturing, having produced the regiment's first UAS airframes via 3D printing during an earlier Flytrap exercise. Previously, the U.S. Army procured over 30 3D printers, deployed with the regiment inside modular shelters, and recently supported related operations in Lithuania and Poland. King stated that expeditionary additive manufacturing has become part of the regiment's baseline operational capability when deployed, a model proven indispensable over the past two years.

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