Marine Gladiator charges ahead.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana

After splitting from a joint ground robotics program with the U.S. Army, the Marines decided to build their own unmanned combat vehicle, called the Gladiator.

"The Army chose FCS [future combat systems], and the Marines said they can't wait that long. They needed something sooner, so we settled for much less capability," said Marine Col. Terry Griffin, program manager for unmanned ground systems.

Carnegie Mellon and Lockheed Martin are competing to build the first Gladiator prototypes for the upcoming system development and demonstration phase, and both are demonstrating their vehicles at the Quantico Marine base, in Virginia.

The Office of Naval Research awarded the two companies the contract to develop the second phase of the program. The Carnegie Mellon consortium received $2.3 million, while Lockheed Martin received 52 million.

According to Larry Hennebeck, the Gladiator program manager at the Robotic-Systems Joint Project Office, the SDD phase is a few months away and a contract award for that part of the program is planned for this summer.

Gladiator could be in operation by 2008. At press time, Griffin was waiting for funds to be approved for the 2006 budget.

The Gladiator is supposed to provide the Marine Air-Ground Task Force with a remote-control operated semi-autonomous ground vehicle for remote reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition, as well as nuclear, biological and chemical reconnaissance obstacle breaching and tiring capability.

Almost the size of an all-terrain vehicle, the Gladiator system will consist of a mobile and...