Hohenfels, Germany (AFP) — Deep in a Bavarian forest, a black reconnaissance drone buzzes overhead, piloted by US soldiers hoping to put lessons learnt from the war in Ukraine into practice.

Cheaper and more plentiful than in the past, drones are changing the face of modern warfare, particularly in Ukraine.

Both Moscow and Kyiv use them for armed attacks as well as surveillance, making it hard for combatants to hide.

“It’s a transparent battlefield. That’s why in Ukraine you see troops deep down in bunkers or consistently moving,” said Brigadier General Steve Carpenter, training with the army at a base in Hohenfels, in the southern German state of Bavaria.

“You stop, you die.”

Army Chief of Staff General Randy George said the US military is changing as a result of what it sees in Ukraine and the way drone warfare is developing.

That means making a unit’s footprint smaller and more mobile, making them harder to target.

During the exercise, involving soldiers from the US army’s 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, the battle headquarters changed position four times in nine days.

No more than about 20 personnel are usually there at any one time — far fewer than in past campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, when upwards of 100 may have been at a command post.

Of the lessons drawn from the Ukraine war, “I think the most important is the speed with which we need to change,” said George, urging the army to become more “flexible, nimble, adaptive.”

With new technology moving fast in Ukraine, the US military also wants to speed up its procurement processes.

There were tentative signs of this at Hohenfels.

New transport trucks were being tested just three months after the army asked General Motors to repurpose a civilian vehicle, a period that Alex Miller, George’s science and technology adviser, said “might be” record time for the army.