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Video by Capt. Jennifer French

173rd Airborne Brigade Hosts Innovation Symposium, Highlights Urgency of Military Adaptation

173rd Airborne Brigade

March 24, 2025 | 1:44

The 173rd Airborne Brigade will host an innovation symposium March 25–26, 2025, welcoming nearly 50 private sector vendors to discuss military adaptation and emerging technologies that could shape the future of combat.

The two-day event, held at Caserma Del Din and Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, will spotlight how the Army is rethinking its approach to modernization, particularly in response to lessons learned from ongoing global conflicts.

“For us it's about adaptation,” said Maj. Frank Solano, a key organizer of the symposium. “We use the word innovation a lot but it's really about evolution and adaptation.”

Participating vendors are set to demonstrate a range of capabilities — from drone technology and battlefield communications to artificial intelligence and logistics systems — all aimed at improving readiness and effectiveness in complex operational environments.

“I feel an urgency and certainly people around me feel an urgency to be ready and to change the way we do things,” said 1st Lt. Aiden Roberts, who works in the brigade’s innovation cell.

Both Solano and Roberts emphasized how today’s threats demand a new mindset. Unlike past conflicts, where the U.S. military maintained overwhelming technological superiority, current adversaries are leveraging inexpensive commercial tools — such as drones and open-source software — to level the playing field.

“When we were in Afghanistan, we had airspace superiority, we had all these next-generation technologies where our adversary didn’t have those things,” Solano said. “Now what we’re seeing from these current conflicts is our adversaries are leveraging low-cost commercial capabilities to field these next-generation technologies.”

“So for our paratroopers, one, you gotta understand how to use them but you also have to be fully attuned for how to conquer them,” he added.

The symposium is part of a broader initiative within the 173rd Airborne to instill a culture of continuous improvement — not just through equipment, but through mindset.

“Being innovative means just not accepting that something is broken,” Roberts said. “It means trying to make it better.”

The event reflects a growing movement across the Army to crowdsource solutions from within units, as well as to tap into civilian technology sectors for rapid experimentation and fielding.

“I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity that I’ve had to basically look and find problems and then try to solve them,” Roberts said. “It’s a pretty unique charge — and especially as an infantry officer, not what I thought I’d be doing — but really fun and rewarding.”

Solano agreed. “It’s important to equip our paratroopers with the next-generation technologies because we’re seeing the character of warfare change. As we are gathering lessons from current conflicts, right now the world is watching.”

The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army's Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deployable forces to the United States European, African, and Central Command areas of responsibility. Forward deployed across Italy and Germany, the brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build partnerships and strengthen the alliance.

(U.S. Army video by Capt. Jennifer French)