Get a grip, the Army Futures Command chief said: It’s way too early to start second-guessing the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program.

Industry’s prototype Robotic Combat Vehicles are proving more capable than the Army expected, Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman told me: “It is really exciting.”

The Army will sacrifice some protection to fit two NGCVs on one Air Force C-17.

Yes, MPF is much lighter and less heavily armored than the M1 Abrams or even Russian tanks like the T-90. But MPF is going to light infantry units that currently have no armored vehicles at all, just a handful of Humvees, towed M777 howitzers, and whatever weapons the men can carry on their backs.

BAE System’s CV90 Mark IV is the latest upgrade of a 25-year-old vehicle widely used in Europe; the Rheinmetall-Raytheon Lynx is an all-new design, although individual components have a good track record; but the General Dynamics Griffin III is in the middle, combining a new gun and new electronics with the time-tested chassis from the European ASCOD family.

“It doesn’t have to be a tank, it just has to be decisive and lethal,” Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman answered. “If that is run by a flux capacitor, hovers, and has a ray gun — and we can make it run at a reasonable cost — we’ll look at it.”

AUSA: The Marines want their Armored Reconnaissance Vehicle to carry a scout drone that can look for threats and target them with loitering strike missiles or drones. Now General Dynamics Land Systems and drone maker AeroVironment are teaming up to offer the same built-in drone for future Army vehicles. The two companies announced here today that they’ve… Keep reading →

After the Army’s director armored vehicle modernization raises concerns about weight, the companies respond with new details.

The Google Car and Tesla Autopilot have blazed a trail for the future Army. Both robotics technology and Army thinking have come a long way since 2009, when Defense Secretary Bob Gates cancelled the massive Future Combat Systems program. Where FCS tried to invent new technology on a schedule for 19 different manned and unmanned… Keep reading →

The actual Robotic Combat Vehicle that gets mass-produced and fielded by 2028 will be an all-new design, not a converted M113. But why wait for someone to design and build the perfect hardware, when you can start testing the software and the tactics on something cheaply available today?