Defense Daily’s Cal Biesecker talked with Col. Rob Kinney, chief of fires for Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps on Sept. 16 at Fort Bragg, N.C., during the Scarlet Dragon 26.3 experimentation effort.

We spoke at the company node area of the exercise where different edge sensors were deployed integrated into a command-and-control architecture that fed into common operating picture for situational awareness of drone threats. The latest iteration of Scarlet Dragon was focused on defensive fires, electromagnetic warfare and the C2 architecture, three of Corps Commander LTG Greg Anderson’s five priorities for innovation.

Kinney said the XVIII Airborne Corps is working with vendors to fill identified gaps—both technology and processes—in its defensive fires. Some of the sensor companies at the company level included Squarehead, DroneShield, Guardian RF and McQ Inc.