The chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday knocked the Army’s recent decision to cancel a robotic ground vehicle program that she said is a testament to the innovation the Defense Department needs on the battlefield.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll he “should review this decision” to terminate the Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) program, adding, “I think it was terribly unfair and a real mistake.”
The committee’s defense panel met to review the Army’s fiscal year 2026 budget request.
The Army reportedly recently selected Textron’s [TXT] Ripsaw robotic vehicle for the RCV, which would be built by the company’s Howe & Howe Technologies business unit in Maine, Collins said. She called Howe & Howe an “innovative, brilliant firm, the kind of company that we need more of in our industrial base.”
Driscoll defended the cancellation, saying the RCV became too expensive due to the Army’s usual case of adding “too many requirements,” which slowed the program and put it behind the cost curve when “an $800 drone with a very cheap munition can take out a $3 million piece of equipment endlessly.” The U.S. cannot sustain this, he said.
Driscoll suggested there are less expensive ways to create autonomous vehicles, highlighting that software companies like Applied Intuition that can equip existing drive-by-wire vehicles with their technology and make them autonomous “in 10 days.”
“And that’s the type of cost curve we can afford, is to go out and find things that are already being purchased by consumers and translate them over to military cases,” he said. “And so, for the vast majority of the things we need to purchase today—to counterbalance all of the exquisite things we’ve purchased in the past—we have got to be buying cheap, attributable, scalable solutions. And unfortunately for the RCV, it’s just not one.”
Collins countered with three points. She highlighted that in the Army’s 250th birthday parade in Washington, D.C., last Saturday that was viewed by President Trump, Textron’s Ripsaw RCV was publicly unveiled.
“It’s the height of irony that you would feature this combat vehicle in your parade as the future of the Army at the same time that you’ve canceled the contract, the cancellation of a contract that was won over a lot of other competitors,” Collins said.
Second, she added, is that the RCV comes with counter-drone technology, giving it a self-defense capability against drone threats.
Finally, Collins pointed out that drones are a threat to all vehicles on the battlefield, noting that the RCV is “autonomous,” which means “You’re not going to lose a soldier’s life if it’s taken out.”