JUST IN: Budget Delays Could Affect Fielding of Army’s Autonomous Resupply Vehicle (UPDATED)

ARMY NEWS

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RESTON, Virginia — The Army is hoping to field an autonomous vehicle that can resupply soldiers in the field within the next 18 months, but the lack of a fiscal year 2025 budget could delay its debut, service officials said Feb. 25.

A top priority for the Army as it grapples with the challenge of conducting logistics in contested environments is developing human-machine integrated supply and distribution systems, said Maj. Gen. Michelle Donahue, commander of Combined Arms Support Command.

“We must optimize the combinations of humans and machines to increase lethality, survivability and agility while streamlining and reducing and anticipating those logistics burdens,” Donahue said during a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference. “The integration of autonomous systems for resupply, maintenance and energy distribution will be a game-changer.”

The Army is developing an Autonomous Transport Vehicle System, or ATV-S, that can conduct “autonomous replenishment of critical commodities to extend the division commander's operational reach,” she said. The hope is that the system — by having the ability to autonomously navigate varied and unpredictable routes while maintaining continuous movement — could increase the sustainment throughput of the service's composite truck companies by 50 percent.

In December 2023, the Army — in collaboration with the Defense Innovation Unit — awarded prototyping contracts to Robotic Research Autonomous Industries — now Forterra — Neya Systems and Carnegie Robotics for the ATV-S program to retrofit the service’s Palletized Load System with autonomous navigation kits.

Since then, the program has downselected to two vendors, Forterra and Carnegie Robotics, and has entered phase 2, which involves testing the system for safety, suitability and sustainability, said Kyle Bruner, project manager for force projection in the Program Executive Office for Combat Support and Combat Service Support.

The Army is hoping to begin fielding the Autonomous Transport Vehicle System in the next 12 to 18 months, but that could be affected by the lack of a 2025 budget, with the federal government currently operating under a continuing resolution, Donahue said.

Under the continuing resolution, the Army is only authorized to spend what was appropriated in the 2024 budget for ATV-S, she said. “That's why I said 12 to 18 months. It could even be 24 months depending on if we can't go forth with the final source selection for that capability.”

Bruner confirmed the program has been “hampered” by the continuing resolution, saying he is targeting 2027 for the first unit issued. Phase 2 testing is expected to begin in June and will be followed by a fielding decision, he said.

Col. William Arnold, the Army’s chief of transportation, said one of the system’s key benefits is how it can mitigate the risk of operator fatigue.

“I see ATV-S as providing the ability to allow us to have transportation on the move,” Arnold said at the conference. “We're no longer going to have to worry as much about work-rest cycles because we can keep the capabilities going” to resupply warfighters and in turn keep them going, enhancing the endurance and responsiveness of logistics operations.

The system could also be integrated into vehicles beyond the Palletized Load System, Bruner said, as future Army vehicles such as the Common Tactical Truck will come off the production line “autonomy ready” with the digital backbone and safety systems that ATV-S relies upon.

The system is currently tele-operated, “but we have a pathway to full autonomy that we are going to work over the next several years and add capability over time so you can control that convoy from anywhere in the convoy with one control vehicle,” Bruner said. That will allow increased throughput, “it will take soldiers out of harm's way, and it is a priority within the Army.”

The Army still has plenty to think through as it prepares to deploy ATV-S, such as “what it means to operate autonomous trucks on U.S. highways” and what it means for “commanders to take risk in knowing that there’s always a human in the loop for that system somewhere in that convoy,” Donahue said.

Arnold said the Army will have to train its truck masters to “think differently.”

Currently, a truck master’s “sole responsibility is to take that truck fleet, understand what capabilities are available and then task those trucks to the mission requirements,” he said.

With the introduction of autonomous systems like ATV-S, a truck master will become more of a “movement controller” who takes these new capabilities and tasks them out “at a dynamic rate” to deliver them anytime, anywhere, he said.

“We'll have to teach our NCOs and our officers the importance of understanding how to employ autonomy, when to employ autonomy, and that's something I'm looking at now in our doctrine … and I'm starting to teach it in our school this year because it is just around the corner,” he said.

The adoption of and adaptation to autonomy in the Army’s logistics operations must happen fast, because “this is critical capability,” Donahue said. The introduction of autonomous systems like ATV-S will be the most transformative event for the sustainment community “since we introduced trucks back in like 1915.”

Donahue said she is “fully committed to making sure that this capability” gets funded. “This is going to be a game-changer for us, and so I look forward to continuing to see us experiment with this, to get more commanders used to using autonomous trucks and trusting in the system because it has been tested and tested and tested.”

Topics: Budget, Robotics and Autonomous Systems