The tank isn’t dead. The way it used to wage war might be.

The Ukraine war has changed how the US Army trains its tank crews for war. US Army photo HOHENFELS, Germany — The US Army's Abrams tanks are built to charge into battle, using their heavy armor and powerful cannon to break through enemy defenses. But at a major training exercise in Germany, they were doing everything they could to stay out of sight. Driving through the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, the Army's main overseas training facility, the presence of the 1st Armored Division's Abrams tanks was hard to miss. Mud tracks crisscrossed and meandered through the grassy hills, scarred by the treads of the heavy armored vehicles. However, the tanks themselves were nowhere in sight. They were hidden along the treelines and deeper in the forest, careful not to reveal their positions to enemy reconnaissance drones. For a vehicle built to deliver overwhelming firepower on the battlefield, concealment has become a matter of survival. Drones filled the sky when Business Insider visited the Hohenfels training grounds in late October to observe Combined Resolve, a recurring exercise that pitted a rotational armor brigade against an opposition force simulating a US adversary. The training environment was designed to resemble the battlefields in Ukraine, where heavy drone proliferation has made it extremely difficult for tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to move freely without being detected. Armored assets have taken heavy losses in the war, raising questions among some warfare experts about their continued relevance on a modern battlefield dominated by constant overhead surveillance and cheap precision strikes. At the JMRC in Germany, Army officers insisted that tanks aren't dead. However, effectively keeping them in the fight means changing how armored formations operate, from the way tanks move and conceal themselves to how they refuel, communicate, and prepare for an attack. An M1 Abrams tank during exercise Combined Resolve last month. Jake Epstein/Business Insider "I don't see armor disappearing," said Sgt. Sean Brenna, an M1A2 Abrams tank gunner with the 1st Armored Division's 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team (1/1 ABCT). "A lot of people are like, 'Drones are the death of the tank,'" he said. "I don't see that. I see tanks evolving." What Ukraine taught the US Army Russia's full-scale invasion has dramatically upended perceptions of armored vehicles on the modern battlefield. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were once seen as pillars of Ukraine's defense; in the early stages of the war, for instance, some of these systems — like the M1 Abrams and German-made Leopard tanks— were considered priority acquisitions for Kyiv. But drones have made it much harder for armor to operate effectively. Ukraine and Russia have lost multimillion-dollar armored vehicles to drones that cost a few hundred dollars. Both sides have tried to mitigate the risk by equipping tanks with added protection, such as cage armor, but it's far from a perfect solution. Across much of the sprawling front line, dense minefields, entrenched defenses, artillery, and widespread drone surveillance have made large-scale maneuver increasingly difficult. Drones in particular have expanded the danger, creating a miles-wide "kill zone" where soldiers and their vehicles risk being spotted and targeted whenever they move. Tanks and other armored vehicles have taken a beating in Ukraine. Alexander Ermochenko/REUTERS At the Army's training grounds in the Bavarian hills outside Munich, the drone threat was impossible to ignore. At one point during the exercise, soldiers clad in black, wearing baseball hats and camouflage vests, rushed out of a command post and across an uneven field to deploy a spy drone. As they worked, a sudden buzz filled the air. Another drone, a small quadcopter, appeared almost out of nowhere and flew toward the team. A soldier raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. Jamming, it produced an impotent click. The drone hovered briefly before flying off. It turned out to be a friendly asset, but had it belonged to the enemy, the soldiers could have found themselves facing an attack. The US Army has increasingly been confronting these threats and related vulnerabilities in training, with Ukrainian soldiers helping expose just how dangerous the battlefield has become for American armored formations. Like other NATO militaries, the US has leveraged Ukraine's experience and included its soldiers in major exercises across Europe. During an iteration of Combined Resolve held earlier this year, Ukrainian soldiers from the 412th Unmanned Systems Brigade, an elite unit known as "Nemesis," served as an opposing force, challenging US armor. Nemesis helped to cause roughly 70% of the casualties suffered by a US armored brigade in the opening two days. A soldier with the opposition force tries to shoot down a drone during Combined Resolve. Jake Epstein/Business Insider The Americans eventually improved, changing tactics, and the shar