Driverless trucks poised to join military operations.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

After more than a decade of development, the Army is poised to integrate autonomous and semi-autonomous tactical wheeled vehicles into its fleets.

An Army requirements oversight council met Feb. 10 to decide if the service will proceed with fielding two kinds of kits and making them programs of record, said Bernard Theisen, program manager for automated ground resupply at the Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center.

Gaining AROC approval will move the technology from the lab to the acquisition community, which will request funding and begin the process of fielding it for noncombat vehicles of all sizes.

It's an important step in the Army's vision to expand the use of autonomous vehicles on battlefields, which may one day include tanks and mobile artillery, Theisen said.

"We have demonstrated these things, put tens of thousands of miles on them. We've given them to soldiers. We have used them in the desert, the forest, in the rain and the snow. So they have got some good lineage," Theisen told National Defense.

They have yet to be used in combat, despite more than 10 years of development.

The idea to convert trucks used to haul materiel, fuel and water to self-driving systems emerged at the outset of the Iraq War when insurgents attacked supply convoys with roadside bombs and small arms. As casualties mounted, the Army began looking into leader-follower concepts that would reduce the number of soldiers exposed to ambushes.

At the same time, Congress mandated that one-third of the Army's vehicles be robotic by the end of the decade, a goal it was not able to reach.

That ideal is still very much in the mind of TARDEC officials, Theisen said. While operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down and there are no longer the numbers of convoys needed to take supplies to forward operating bases, the "threat is still out there," he said.

The kits, or appliques, are also seen as a "baby step" for the other concepts. "What we're really doing is building a foundation for all the future programs," he said.

That would include ideas such as robotic wingmen, where formations may include a manned command-and-control vehicle that guides unmanned combat vehicles on the battlefield.

"This is going to be the same underlying technology put on other vehicles," he said. However, there is still a lot of development remaining until military vehicles can operate in those kinds of complex settings, he said.

Meanwhile, military logistics trucks...