Lt. Cmdr. Corey A. Rollins from Texas Christian University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance. He is currently attending the Naval Postgraduate School to earn a Master of Arts in Security Studies. His next tour will be at U.S. Sixth Fleet Headquarters in Naples, Italy.
After working in the civilian finance sector Rollins attended Officer Candidate School, where he commissioned in 2013. He was winged a Naval Aviator in 2014. As a MH-60S helicopter pilot Rollins was attached to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron FOURTEEN (HSC-14) then served as an instructor pilot attached to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron TWO (HSC-2).
Rollins then served at Special Reconnaissance Team ONE (SRT-1) as Officer-in-Charge of a 17-person Unmanned Systems (UxS) detachment. In support of SEAL Team SEVEN, his SRT troop deployed to the PACOM and CENTCOM areas of responsibility. Rollins was then accepted for lateral transfer to the Navy Foreign Area Officer program.
Short Answer: The desire to channel an overflow information about small drones in Russia and Ukraine into a format that could be useful to our forces. My experiences as a helicopter pilot and drone operator helped to translate source information in to practical concepts.
Long Answer:
The flood of interesting but chaotic news coming out of the war in Ukraine—especially regarding small drones (ex. quadcopters, USVs, UGVs)—made me want to pursue the topic. While much of the reporting on unmanned systems was insightful, that information wasn’t necessarily designed to be useful for real-world application. I wanted to take that flood of information—from both the Ukrainian and Russian experiences—and organize it into a practical format that our force could take lessons from.
My experiences operating manned and unmanned systems during the previous two tours definitely helped point me toward the Russo-Ukrainian War. The war was a constant conversation point after Russia’s full invasion in 2022 when I was an OIC (Officer in Charge) for an unmanned systems unit. During deployment, many of our partner forces wanted to talk more and more about drones. At that time, there were only a limited number of formalized lessons from Ukraine were useful for our exchanges, but we did our best. Hopefully, this thesis can improve and consolidate our lessons learned from Russia and Ukraine.
Short Answer: On offense, tactical unit enablement; On defense, assertiveness at home and abroad.
Long Answer:
In terms of tactical unit enablement, a small drone’s usefulness for ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) is a potential game changer. For less than three pounds of gear, a unit can have an organic ISR asset with three battery packs that provide 20 minutes of flight time each. Typically, a ground unit in Ukraine will send a quadcopter or similar drone out ahead of its advance to scout for enemy forces or to assess terrain. Additionally, some of these same units will use quadcopters for artillery spotting and BDA (battle damage assessment) to increase accuracy. Despite thousands of videos and heavy reporting on FPV attack quadcopters, most small drones in Ukraine are used for ISR.
For assertiveness, the recent “Spider Web” attack on Russian military bases deep inside its own territory should be all the proof we need to get serious about defending U.S. bases against small drones at home and abroad. As a former helicopter pilot, I remember flying eye-level with quadcopters near our bases in the U.S. and wondering what would happen if the operator had bad intentions for our aircraft. Meanwhile, illegal drone overflights were an almost daily occurrence on base. We need a united military-civil-political effort with the will to assertively prevent, pursue, and prosecute these types of unauthorized drone incursions on U.S. bases before they take a tragic turn.
Short Answer: President Trump (via Executive Order 14307) and Secretary Hegseth are putting to policy something that we’ve needed for a long time.
Long Answer:
Frankly, DJI—a Chinese manufacturer—has dominated the small drone industry in terms of product quality, price point, and market share. This market situation puts obvious security restrictions on the U.S. military’s ability to use the highest-quality small drones. These new policies from President Trump and Secretary Hegseth could help unleash combatant commands in all theaters. As the world’s leader in technological innovation, the U.S. should be able to produce small drones that outperform the competition—but price point will still be difficult to overcome.
As a way forward, both President Trump and Secretary Hegseth acknowledge the roles of private sector companies and grassroots organizations in the small drone procurement processes. For both Russia and Ukraine, small grassroots and volunteer organizations have been the most innovative, responsive, and inexpensive small drone manufacturers and suppliers within the war—even outperforming DJI. The U.S. military should seek to replicate that procurement model within the context of EO 14307 and the “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” memorandum.
