Army engineers are taking a look at robotic systems, including Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] Squad Mission Support System (SMSS), to see if they can conduct counter-improvised explosive devices (IED) missions, something high on service priority lists.

“This is an expansion for SMSS,” Don Nimblett, Unmanned Systems Business Development manager for Lockheed Martin, told Defense Daily in an interview. “We just got back from Afghanistan–we had four months of a pretty successful experiment over there with the Army, we’re quite pleased with what took place” (Defense Daily, July 29, 2011).

Lockheed Martin is loaning two SMSS vehicles to be part of the DEMS, the dismounted engineer maneuver support (DEMS) program, run by Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) in Michigan, and the Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate Laboratory in Virginia.

The DEMS program wants “to investigate several different robotic vehicles to see, one, can you use robotics to conduct counter IED operations, and secondly, if you can, then what are the requirements…needed for a vehicle to do that,” Nimblett said.

In September, soldiers at Ft. Leonard Wood, home of the Army’s engineers, will train and then exercise the robotic systems in three to four vignettes to try and answer those questions, he said.

Currently, the counter IED mission is done in several ways, from hand held detectors to large vehicles like the Husky, sort of a large, armored road grader that has ground penetrating radar, but all are done with manned systems.

“The idea is to get people out of the vehicles,” since it’s well known that the vehicles set off IEDs, Nimblett said. While the vehicles are designed to take the hit, using robotic systems would  improve soldier survivability.

“We’ve essentially provided two vehicles, one to the Night Vision Lab, and One to TARDEC, which turned over the vehicle to Michigan Tech University–their agency to conduct their counter-IED testing,” he said.

The vehicles will carry government furnished equipment such as a roller and rake, or some type of pallet with sensors in the SMSS cargo section.

Nimblett and the SMSS program manager will head to Michigan where they’ve been invited to see some tests and demonstrations.

“Once they’re finished in September, we expect to get the vehicles back and move on to other experiments,” Nimblett said. “This is really probably, to my knowledge, the first time counter IED has had robotic vehicles and…(in the experiment) find out if there also is value in an autonomous vehicle. This probably a very valid and functional use for robotic vehicles.”

Separately, Lockheed Martin is talking with Customs and Border Patrol representatives, trying to determine what it is they do that a robotic system with some reconnaissance gear on board might do for them. “We’re pursuing it actively,” Nimblett said.