US Army Green Berets have begun training Poland's special forces to move and strike on the kind of drone-saturated ground Ukraine fights on, the Associated Press reported. No ally besides the US had taken on the drone-heavy drill until now, and US instructors built it only months ago from Ukraine's battlefield lessons.

Ukraine has turned from an aid recipient into a source of tactics, feeding allies the counter-drone methods and strike tactics it forged against Russia's invasion. NATO is still behind: an alliance war game in February exposed how badly its own forces fare against drone warfare of that kind.

Bavaria plays the part of Russia

The drill spans a 1,100-square-mile (3,000 km²) stretch of Bavarian countryside around the US Army's Hohenfels training center, an hour southeast of Nuremberg. Polish commandos must slip past a US airborne unit playing the enemy, then move about 60 miles (100 km) north to Grafenwoehr and blow up a mock target.

In earlier runs, Green Berets removed their uniforms to blend in, a senior enlisted soldier familiar with the scenario said. He and a Green Beret officer at the training complex spoke anonymously, under a US policy against naming special forces personnel.

"This is supposed to be Russia and you're going to stand out in Russia," he said.

Farms, villages, cameras, and a populous city line the route. German civilians, largely unaware of the exercise, become the test: any tip they phone to police can help the military pinpoint the team. Once a team is spotted, "now you have the entire Russian arsenal coming at you," the soldier said. The US side can send military police with dogs or direct more drones to the area, and had more than 100 available in earlier runs.

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A Green Beret officer said the drill tries to replicate "all of those effects that we're seeing either Russia or Ukraine having to overcome." Ukraine pioneered this kind of drone warfare across four and a half years of fighting Russia. Its combat experience has been entering NATO training elsewhere in Poland, and its drone crews recently outmatched a US brigade in another German drill. The exercise has run just twice before, both this year with US teams, and the officer said he expects most, if not all, of NATO's 32 members to show interest in trying it.

The wider US message on drones has been mixed, AP said. On 20 August, the Army's acting chief of staff ordered a Europe-based drone unit back to infantry duty. US President Donald Trump has also wavered on cutting troop levels in Europe, and his administration launched a force review.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in March that Ukraine was already helping five Middle East and Gulf states counter Iranian drones fired during the US-Israeli war on Iran, and that US and European governments had asked for help too, AP reported.