U.S. military gearing up for unmanned ground vehicle demo
The Defense Department is planning to put industry-built robotic vehicles through their paces in North Dakota this fall amid a broader push by U.S. military components to add uncrewed systems to their fleets.
The Joint Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) demonstration, dubbed GroundBreaker 1, is slated for mid-October at Camp Grafton, according to a notice published Aug. 21 on a government contracting website.
Officials are currently accepting white papers from vendors. Notably, only members of the DoW Drone OTA Consortium are eligible to participate. (“DoW” is an abbreviation for Department of War, the Trump administration’s preferred name for the Department of Defense.)
The Pentagon launched the drone consortium a few months ago with the aim of bridging what officials called “the critical gap” between the government and the commercial technology sector. The organization “facilitates the rapid solicitation, evaluation, and award” of other transaction agreements (OTAs) for prototyping and production that address the military’s specific areas of interest and statements of need, according to a notice released in May.
OTAs are intended to cut through bureaucratic red tape associated with traditional acquisition processes, help the Pentagon bring nontraditional vendors into the procurement fold, and ultimately speed the delivery of new tech to service members.
The upcoming demo is part of an effort to add UGV offerings to the Pentagon’s Drone Marketplace, which recently went live. The online marketplace includes portals for unmanned aerial systems, uncrewed surface vessels and underwater vehicles, UGVs, and counter-drone platforms. On Monday morning, efforts to access the UGV section of the digital platform resulted in a message saying it was “currently under development.”
Historically, the Pentagon has faced more difficulty bringing UGVs into its fleet than it has fielding unmanned aerial systems or maritime drones, partly due to the unique challenges associated with operating robotic systems in the ground domain where rough terrain must be traversed and there are many types of obstacles to avoid.
UGVs have proven their utility in the Russia-Ukraine war, where both sides have employed them for a variety of missions. U.S. military officials want to adopt the technology to keep troops out of harm’s way.
For the October demo, officials are seeking platforms that can execute in at least one “core mission” area, such as reconnaissance and surveillance; transport of supplies and equipment; explosive ordnance disposal and route clearance; search and rescue; force protection and perimeter security; casualty evacuation; or “Other Support/Multi-Domain Operations,” according to the notice.
“This effort seeks complete UGV systems to enable employment by Warfighters in both tactical and non-tactical environments. Selected vendors will support physical operational assessments, iterative technology enhancements, and direct integration with DoW systems,” officials wrote.
Desired capabilities include autonomous obstacle avoidance, all-terrain mobility, and “open-system, hardware-agnostic software architectures” that “seamlessly integrate” with the military’s networks and command-and-control systems.
Platforms put through their paces at Camp Grafton for GroundBreaker 1 will be operated in “realistic field conditions,” including by service members who will provide feedback about their “usability and overall mission effectiveness,” per the notice.
Vendors whose systems demonstrate “high tactical value and technical maturity” during the demo may be tapped to submit a full technical and cost proposal in pursuit of an OTA award for prototyping, according to the notice.
