{"id":334,"date":"2025-09-09T19:13:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T17:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=334"},"modified":"2025-06-08T11:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T09:43:11","slug":"more-soldiers-control-vehicles-may-be-required-to-maneuver-armys-early-robotic-combat-vehicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=334","title":{"rendered":"More soldiers, control vehicles may be required to maneuver Army\u2019s early Robotic Combat Vehicles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Testing has found that additional US Army soldiers are likely needed to operate early Robotic Combat Vehicles than anticipated even just months ago, the service disclosed this week.<\/p>\n

Under the Army\u2019s envisioned \u201chuman machine integrated formations,\u201d the service wants a future where RCVs are out ahead of soldiers on the front lines, taking on dangerous missions without potential loss of life.\u00a0\u00a0However, the service is not expecting early versions of those robots to have high levels of autonomy, which means soldiers will need to stay close by teleoperating them for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Based on testing earlier this year at\u00a0Fort Irwin, Calif., service leaders believed that for every two RCVs, it would need one control vehicle containing five soldiers\u00a0\u2014 one driver and two teams with two each remotely manning an RCV.<\/p>\n

But in late July, as part of the Army Futures Command\u2019s RCV Pilot-24 exercise, soldiers with the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Division, again used the four RCV surrogates. The idea, \u00a0was to have soldiers inside two trailing control vehicles operating a total of four RCVs on\u00a0reconnaissance and security missions.<\/p>\n

The verdict? That wasn\u2019t an adequate pairing that time around, and the platoon needed a third control vehicle to effectively operate the four robots, according to\u00a0Brig. Gen. Chad Chalfont, the commandant of the Army Armor School at Fort Moore.<\/p>\n

\n
As a result, the unit was \u201crestructured\u201d and a third control vehicle was folded into the mix, the service explained. The service did not detail how many soldiers were now in each control vehicle, but if the math holds, that would be an additional five soldiers needed towards the front lines.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

While that July test event is moving the manned vehicle to robot ratio in the wrong direction, service officials previously told Breaking Defense that it is going to take time to develop and field RCVs. And part of that process may mean soldiers closer to the robots they control, as well as using them for\u00a0limited missions\u00a0while work continues evolving on a number of fronts.<\/p>\n

The service is testing out those RCV surrogates and control vehicle to examine how they may operate them in battle and tech limitations but still hasn\u2019t selected which company will build the initial RCVs. That decision is expected to come in early 2025 when one company is picked to proceed with platform development. (McQ, Textron Systems, General Dynamics Land Systems, and Oshkosh Defense are all under prototyping contracts today.) And it has broadly laid out plans to use an Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle\u00a0(AMPV) as the future control vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Testing has found that additional US Army soldiers are likely needed to operate early Robotic Combat Vehicles than anticipated even just months ago, the service disclosed this week. Under the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,28],"tags":[57,64],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-army","category-military-tech","tag-army","tag-robotic-combat-vehicle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Robotic-Combat-Vehicles.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2053,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/2053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}