Uncrewed Military Vehicle Gets Autonomous Brain That Was Bred as a Texas Trucker

The U.S. military is knee-deep in the development of land-based drones (I'll call them that for the lack of a better term), and it runs several programs aimed at delivering uncrewed vehicles. One of these efforts is called the Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV), which aims to deliver a robotic vehicle that could be used for pretty much all imaginable tasks: reconnaissance, surveillance, and even tactical and combat maneuvers.

At the end of ast year the Army announced the companies that are competing for the contract (Textron Systems, McQ, General Dynamics Land Systems, and Oshkosh Defense), and gave them each until August 2024 to deliver prototypes for testing. It's unclear if that happened, but we did get word of one of these vehicles evolving a bit.

The vehicle is the Ripsaw M3, the work of Textron together with Howe & Howe and Teledyne FLIR. This thing is basically a tracked platform that can carry a variety of payloads with little regard on what lies underneath its tracks – it can be anything from the asphalt of a highway to the uneven surfaces of woods.

The full details on the Ripsaw are not exactly public knowledge. We do know the thing weighs eight tons, and that it was designed to be upgradable. It can be fitted with swappable payloads, and that gives it the potential to be used for a variety of roles, and, if need be, by means of a kit, it can even move underwater.

The news concerning Ripsaw is that it was just fitted with a self-driving system made by Kodiak Robotics. The name may seem familiar, and that's probably because the tech, called Kodiak Driver, is already deployed on freight trucks doing the rounds in West Texas's Permian Basin – to date, we're told, over 6,000 loads were delivered there by driverless trucks, and no less than 3.5 million miles (5.6 million km) were covered this way.

The same system was now included in the Ripsaw, and that marks not only the first time it has been used on a tracked vehicle, but also the first time it is deployed on a machine that literally does not have room for a driver.

The tech is supposed to give the Ripsaw 360-degree visibility and, through the use of sensors installed in so-called DefensePods, the ability to navigate on its own even in the most adverse of environments. The brain gives the vehicle the ability to identify its surroundings, recognize where the drivable surfaces are, and then drive itself just like a human would, as per Textron.

The Kodiak Driver is supposed to give the Ripsaw full off-road autonomy, but that doesn't mean humans are completely out of the loop when it comes to operating this machine. The Ripsaw comes with a so-called Assisted Autonomy feature which gives soldiers the ability to remotely control the vehicle.

As per Textron, this feature does not completely eliminate the Kodiak mind from the equation, as the tracked vehicle will still use it for safety purposes.

The DefensePods I mentioned earlier, in reality a military adaptation of Kodiak's SensorPods, are technically enclosures where the system's pre-calibrated sensors are.

There's nothing spectacular about that, but what's interesting about them is that, if they become damaged or are in need of an upgrade, these enclosures can be replaced in the field in just ten minutes, with minimal training for the one doing it and only by using standard tools.

It's unclear at this point whether Textron presented the Ripsaw to the military with the Kodiak brain on. What is clear is that it does open up a series of interesting possibilities, and Textron already said it is now looking at further uses with both the American and allied militaries.

The RCV program I mentioned earlier is scheduled to enter its second phase in 2025, and that is when the Army will select the winner of the contract. A few years of testing will follow, and we should see the country's newest land drone in operation as soon as 2028.

The U.S. Army plans to spend no less than $750 million over the next five years for the creation of the RCV machine, but it never said how many of these robotics platforms it needs for its daily operations.

We'll keep an eye out for more details on this program, especially given how the other companies that take part in it are yet to show the world exactly what they are working on.