As the Army moves out on its effort to build Robotic Combat Vehicles (RCVs), a lead official has said he wants to develop an ecosystem for the capability that brings in control vehicles, new modular payloads and networking to tie platforms together.
Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team, said Gen. James Rainey, head of the modernization-focused Army Futures Command, has tasked him with moving out “aggressively” on RCV fielding.
“We anticipate moving forward aggressively with Robotic Combat Vehicles and I think that a lot of you in the audience here are going to be part of those solutions moving forward,” Norman said during a discussion on Wednesday at the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) annual meeting in Washington, D.C. “I won’t state publicly the milestone that [Rainey’s] given us, but I can tell you it’s a very aggressive and ambitious goal and we’re going to meet it.”
The Army last month announced it had selected Textron Systems [TXT], General Dynamics Land Systems [GD], Oshkosh Defense [OSK] and McQ Inc. for the RCV program’s first phase, tasking each with delivering two prototype platforms by next August (Defense Daily, Sept. 21).
The four firms were awarded a combined total of $24.7 million for phase one of the RCV program, with the Army planning to ultimately select one company in fiscal year 2025 to deliver nine prototypes before making a production decision in FY ‘27.
Norman said along with the actual platforms themselves, he wants the RCV “ecosystem” to include control vehicles, modular payloads and a network “that connects that Robotic Combat Vehicle to a control vehicle.”
“Connecting all of those [components] are our software solutions that represent a great opportunity for continued development, collaboration and integration into this [RCV] effort,” Norman said.
Norman detailed his vision for control platforms, and noted the Army’s prior experimentation to inform the RCV program has used modified M2A3 Bradleys as robotic controller vehicles for the surrogate prototypes.
“It’s [about] the interfaces within it and the components in that control vehicle [that are] able to host soldiers who can control robots at distance, several terrain features away beyond line of sight,” Norman said.
GD Land Systems unveiled its new StrykerQB technology demonstrator at the AUSA conference, showcasing a hybrid-electric platform designed as a robotic controller vehicle (Defense Daily, Oct. 3).
“We see an opportunity here to learn with the Army whether the StrykerQB could be part of [experimentation efforts] and provide a nascent solution for that human-machine integration,” Scott Taylor, GD Land Systems’ director of U.S. business development, told Defense Daily.
While Norman didn’t offer specifics on the payloads he would like to see on RCV, he envisions “different capabilities than we have on our manned platforms, capabilities that allow us to thicken the functions of our crewed systems and the ability to cover more terrain or do things that we couldn’t do without the RCVs.”