- XVIII Airborne Corps Signal Detachment trained with the 5.56mm L-variant Drone Round at Oak Grove Training Center, North Carolina, on April 9, 2026.
- The Drone Round requires no weapon modifications, feeds as standard ammunition, and reaches velocities of 2,200 feet per second to neutralize small drones.
Soldiers assigned to the XVIII Airborne Corps Signal Detachment conducted live-fire familiarization training with the 5.56mm L-variant Drone Round at Oak Grove Training Center in North Carolina on April 9, 2026 — putting a new class of kinetic counter-drone ammunition to the test against small unmanned aerial systems without any modifications to their standard rifles.
According to the 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, centered on building unit-level proficiency against small unmanned aerial systems, a threat category that has exploded in relevance on modern battlefields. A small First Person View (FPV) unmanned aerial system was struck by a 5.56mm L-variant Drone Round during the exercise, with the training enabling units to enhance readiness by familiarizing Soldiers with methods to engage such threats. The session was framed not as a one-off demonstration but as part of an ongoing effort to rapidly advance operational counter-UAS capabilities at the unit level.
The L-variant is manufactured by Drone Round, a company based in Gilbert, Arizona, whose leadership traces back to the teams behind Unlimited Ammo, Freedom Munitions, and Ammo Load. The 5.56mm L-variant is specifically designed to neutralize small unmanned aerial systems by volume of fire and projectiles. Rather than relying on a single projectile, the round disperses mid-flight in a pattern similar to a shotgun shell, dramatically increasing the probability of hitting a fast-moving, low-flying drone. The company also produces a 7.62x51mm variant, giving infantry units flexibility across the two most common NATO rifle calibers.
What makes the Drone Round particularly notable from a logistics and training standpoint is how little it disrupts existing equipment. The ammunition is designed to feed identically to standard ammunition and requires no modifications to the weapons platform — no new attachments, no specialized equipment, and no dedicated training pipeline beyond basic familiarization. Soldiers can load it into their existing M4 carbines and engage aerial targets without reconfiguring their weapon systems. The round is suppressor-compatible, functions in both belt-fed and magazine-fed configurations, and achieves muzzle velocities reaching 2,200 feet per second. That speed gives it roughly twice the velocity of a standard 12-gauge shotgun shell while delivering the dispersion pattern needed to intercept small, agile drones.
The round disperses in-flight like a shotgun shell, significantly increasing hit probability on fast-moving drones. That design philosophy addresses one of the most persistent frustrations infantry units face when engaging small drones with conventional ammunition — the near-impossibility of landing a precise single-projectile hit on an erratically maneuvering target moving at speed. Drone Round’s approach trades pinpoint accuracy for a probabilistic kill zone, accepting that saturation of the aerial space around a target is more realistic than a precise single shot.
The company states its production line is entirely domestic, with an annual capacity of up to 350 million rounds of anti-drone ammunition produced within the United States. That scale matters to Army planners who are increasingly aware that counter-UAS capability gaps cannot be filled solely by expensive electronic warfare systems or dedicated interceptor missiles — particularly at the small-unit level where cost-per-engagement is a critical variable.
Drone Rounds first demonstrated its system during an industry showcase at Oak Grove Technology Center, a 200-plus-acre kinetic training range about an hour west of Fort Bragg, where the company showcased a kinetic counter-sUAS round fired from a standard 5.56mm rifle. That December 2025 event was part of the XVIII Airborne Corps’ Joint Innovation Outpost Program, a framework specifically designed to connect small, non-traditional defense companies to Army operational requirements. Conor Schnepf, owner of Drone Rounds, reiterated the value of that program and how it enables non-traditional defense companies to get in front of the Army.
Lt. Gen. Gregory Anderson, commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps, said during the JIOP opening: “Here we are, day one of the JIOP opening, and we’re already connecting small businesses to the military ecosystem. We coordinated for a product demonstration and now we have a proposed solution to an Army wide problem.”
The drone threat that Drone Round is designed to address has metastasized from a niche concern into one of the dominant tactical problems of contemporary warfare. First-person view drones, commercial quadcopters adapted as weapons, and fiber-optic-guided systems that defeat electronic jamming have all proliferated on battlefields from Ukraine to the Middle East, putting pressure on ground forces to find low-cost, widely distributable solutions. Electronic countermeasures remain effective against radio-controlled platforms but are powerless against fiber-optic drones that transmit no radio frequency signal. Kinetic solutions like the Drone Round are designed to address precisely that gap — working against any small aerial threat regardless of its guidance method.
The April exercise at Oak Grove is one visible data point in a much larger Army-wide scramble to equip infantry units with effective drone defenses before the next major conflict demands them at scale. Whether a specialized anti-drone cartridge will become a standard-issue item alongside conventional ammunition remains to be seen, but the training conducted by the XVIII Airborne Corps Signal Detachment suggests the Army is moving past the demonstration phase and into active unit-level familiarization — a meaningful step toward fielding.