The key to fielding a robotic combat vehicle “wingman” within budgets that cut modernization in favor of readiness could lie in old programs long considered shorthand for Army acquisition failure.
Plans are to steadily introduce more robotic and semi-autonomous vehicles into Army formations over the next 25 years. While that definitely entails the near-term proliferation of portable unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) for dismounted missions, it could eventually result in robotic combat vehicles that fight alongside manned tanks, according to Col. William Nuckols, director of the Mounted Requirements Division at the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence.
“Robotics and autonomous systems are certainly going to be a part of the concept behind Next-Generation Combat vehicle (NGCV),” Nuckols, who is in charge of generating requirements for the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle, said recently at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Ala. “In fact, there’s no guarantee the Abrams will be replaced by a future tank. It could conceptually be replaced by an autonomous vehicle with the lethality of an Abrams. It is yet to be determined.”
The Army circulated a draft of its robotics and autonomous systems integration strategy at AUSA’s annual meeting in October in Washington, D.C. The roadmap has since been formalized and covers integration of robots from small man-portable UGVs to the Future Vertical Lift family of rotorcraft.
A similar path was envisioned in the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS), which gobbled up billions of dollars before being summarily canceled because it was chasing technologies that either did not exist or were prohibitively expensive for military use. Nuckols and industry are revisiting the much-maligned program to mine it for technologies that have since matured and are candidates for inclusion in NGCV.
“I don’t want to throw FCS under the bus and a lot of people might cringe at this, but there were a lot of good things that came out of FCS,”Nuckols said.
BAE Systems also sees the value in unrealized robotics initiatives begun under FCS, according to Director of Business Development Jim Miller.
BAE brought to Huntville its Armed Robotic Combat Vehicle (ARCV), which showgoers took to calling the robot tank. It is not a new design, but a refined version of a vehicle that resulted from the canceled FCS.
The FCS included a requirement for an armed robotic or semi-autonomous “wingman” for the tank and infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) members of the vehicle family. The ARCV was developed independently by BAE to meet that requirement. The company partnered then, and is still working, with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on the vehicle and the technology it carries.
“We’ve been working on it through CMU primarily since then,” Miller said. “They have done several versions of the optics and sensors since then.”
“They actually store it for us,” he said. “We had to go up to Pittsburg and get it to bring it here. …
Given GPS waypoints, the ARCV is capable of autonomous navigation while avoiding stationary objects using light detection and ranging sensors mounted on the turret. Its latest iteration is also capable of identifying and avoiding people on complex battlefields, Miller said.
The ARCV also can be remotely controlled either from a stationary ground control station or from the back of a Bradley IFV or similar fighting vehicle as a wingman. The ARCV has no internal crew compartment and “just enough room to load the ammunition and check the engine compartment,” Miller said.
“The other way is you can dismount that kit and carry it in your hands, kind of a common-controller idea, so you know where your thumbs go and all that,” he said. “It’s all wireless. So on the battlefield, you could use that to maneuver it short distances or you could go get in a house or a building and the thing can maneuver around and attack the target for you.”
The Army’s strategy envisions robots doing work that currently endangers soldiers or pulls them from more important tasks better suited for human performance. Specifically they will be employed to improve situational awareness, carry soldier gear, process information, provide logistics support and increase maneuverability.
“When you start thinking of the future possibilities and the effects the robotics might have, it could be a game changer,” Nuckols said. “One of the problems we have right now … is the fact that we can’t have assured control. Until we have assured control of these autonomous and tele-operated systems, we are going to hesitant to replace any of our current formation capabilities with a robotic platform.”
Miller said BAE is not currently shopping the ARCV around for sales, but using it as a conversation starter with the Army and potential industry partners about what robotics are currently capable of.
“The point of bringing the vehicle was to ask the Army what right looks like, or for us to help them know what right looks like and then we’ll invest our money in it, too, and we will team with everyone that’s important and move it ahead,” he said. “Some of the stuff they are asking for exists right now.”
Nuckols called for two testable NGCV prototypes that soldiers can drive by 2022, at which point the Army will make a decision on where its combat vehicle strategy will go from there.
“That decision point in ’22 is critical for the Army and critical for industry to try to line everything up and help the Army see the opportunities there at that decision point,” Miller said. “Not to give them the bad news that they can’t do what they want, but to show them there are opportunities there with what they’ve already got.”