In 2017, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) announced a design competition to develop robotic solutions to the problem sending supplies to soldiers in combat. It described the difficulty of such battlefield logistics in the competition notice: “Although relatively small in distance, these resupply activities are challenging as they are in an environment that is typically hostile, complex and contested. These activities need to quickly and efficiently deliver vital supplies in order to maintain operational tempo and enable successful mission outcomes.” While describing this as a ‘last mile’ issue, it noted that the physical distance involved could be as much as 30km. Apart from supporting combat missions, it also said that such technologies could equally provide help in humanitarian disaster scenarios during peacetime.
The first phase sought proposals for three specific technologies: unmanned air and ground load-carrying platforms; technologies and systems to allow load-carrying platforms to operate autonomously; technologies to autonomously predict, plan, track and optimise resupply demands for military users. Phase two in 2018 selected five bids for building prototype integrated systems for demonstration.
In March 2020, the MOD placed contracts worth £5 million for five vehicles from two of the five contestants for further study in a new programme called Project Theseus. It appears that this will investigate the capability of these vehicles for Joint Tactical Autonomous Resupply and Replenishment (JTARR).
To do that, they will undertake a series of technical evaluations and user utility assessments “to rapidly advance MOD’s understanding under the ‘prototype warfare’ agenda,” as DSTL autonomy lead Peter Stockel said at the time. He was apparently referring to a strategy of moving away from large numbers of standard one-size-fits-all equipment to small numbers of machines tailored to specific needs, as described in the book The Principles of War for the Information Age by Robert Leonhard.
Half of the contract, £2.3 million, was spent on three units of the Viking 6x6 wheel Unmanned Ground Vehicle from engineering organisation Horiba Mira. The Viking can carry up to 750kg of supplies over long distances: up to 30km on full-electric drive, although it is fitted with a hybrid powertrain. It navigates with artificial intelligence-based autonomy without GPS at speeds of up to 50kph. The vehicle is said to have good off-road mobility. The other partner in its original consortium was Frazer Nash Consultancy.
The second contract went to Estonian engineering firm Milrem Robotics, in partnership with defence supplier QinetiQ, for two units of the TITAN unmanned ground system. It is based on Milrem’s THeMIS umanned guided vehicle, with extra autonomous technology integration and delivery by QinetiQ. The vehicle’s powertrain is again hybrid, diesel-electric, providing a range of more than 100km on diesel/electric, or 20km electric-only. Payload capacity ranges from 650-900kg in a 182 by 121cm area. Running on two sets of tracks, each equipped with five wheels, it can cross gaps up to 75cm wide. Other partners in the original consortium were Hull University, Malloy Aeronautics, Roke Manor Research, Oxbotica, IQHQ Ltd and Aberystwyth University.
OTHER PROJECTS
In June, Milrem announced that a consortium it is leading has won a EUR 30m R&D contract from the European Commission. Milrem said that during the project, “a modular and scalable architecture for hybrid manned-unmanned systems will be developed to standardise a European wide ecosystem for aerial and ground platforms, command, control and communication equipment, sensors, payloads, and algorithms.” The THeMIS platform will be equipped with specific payloads and demonstrated in operational environments at different military testing grounds.
The ‘iMUGS’ project, which stands for ‘integrated Modular Unmanned Ground System, also involves GT Cyber Technologies, Safran Electronics & Defense, NEXTER Systems, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Diehl Defence, Bittium Wireless, Insta DefSec, (Un)Manned, dotOcean, Latvijas Mobilais Telefons, GMV Aerospace and Defence, the Estonian Military Academy and Royal Military Academy of Belgium.
To the south, German military supplier Rheinmetall MAN, a long-time supplier of the MOD, including the supply of the British Army’s logistics support vehicle fleet, also had an announcement in April. Four of its unmanned Mission Master robotic vehicles were ordered as part of the Army’s Robotic Platoon Vehicle programme. Its 2019 fund proposal said: “Dismounted troops operate in varying, often complex terrain such as woods, forests, towns and cities.They cannot carry the supplies, sensors and weapons that vehicle-borne troops can, so the Army has identified that small, rapidly deployable, easily employable robotic vehicles can support soldiers in these challenging environments.”
Being supplied is the ‘Cargo’ variant of the vehicles, which can carry up to 500kg and comes with two stretchers that can be easily attached in just 60 seconds to carry wounded personnel. The vehicles can operate in autonomous or semi-autonomous mode via remote control. Few vehicle specifications were available; the 8x8 is reported to have a maximum road speed of 40kph; there is no mention of powertrain.
Supporting the vehicles with training, maintenance and spare parts is a recently set up joint venture, Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL), which traces its roots back to previous British Army combat vehicle suppliers.
WHAT FOR?
All three of the vehicle suppliers are at pains to point out that their vehicles can be used for different kinds of missions. For example, TITAN’s main frame can be adapted to suit the mission or the payload. That might include route clearance or chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) reconnaissance. Horiba MIRA says: “VIKING is a multirole platform and can fulfil a number of specialist roles in addition to resupply such as soldier support, ISTAR (Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance), and IED detection.”
Rheinmetall adds protection, evacuation of casualties and firefighting to that list. It says: “The Mission Master's artificial intelligence and robotic brawn mean that it can execute a multitude of dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks that troops would otherwise have to perform themselves, letting them get on with the most important thing of all: their core mission.”
And that might also include combat, as a kind of autonomous tank. Naturally, none of the suppliers shy away from that fact. Although none of the research programmes are evaluating these functions, that cannot be far behind. At the time of the DSTL announcement in March, Brigadier Darrell Amison, head of capability for combat service support, said: “Robotic and autonomous systems will provide commanders with more options to support a land force operating at greater reach, dispersal and higher tempo.”
In September 2020, DSTL launched a £550,000 tender for just that. It read: “DSTL intends to hire a robotic platoon vehicle (RPV) with accompanying technical support and training, which is capable of being armed with a medium or heavy machine gun and has a surveillance, target acquisition (STA) system capable of detecting a human up to 2km away in all light conditions. DSTL expects the RPV to be able to operate within a dismounted Infantry Section/Platoon and is able to traverse terrain associated with dismounted close combat (DCC) in both urban and rural environments.”