DARPA unmanned vehicle undergoes first integration with US Army MICLIC

US Army 36th Engineer Brigade soldiers perform checks on a trailer carrying an M58 MICLIC. (Janes/Meredith Roaten)

A US Army engineering unit will be the first to integrate an M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge (MICLIC) with a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) in a demonstration at the end of October, officials told Janes on 2 October.

For the first time, a DARPA UGV will be incorporated into the Machine Assisted Rugged Soldier (MARS) autonomous breaching demonstration, which soldiers in the36th Engineer Brigade have been rehearsing since 1 October, soldiers told Janes in interviews at Fort Hood, Texas.

Brigadier General Geoff Van Epps, deputy commanding general maneuver of the III Armored Corps, invited DARPA to participate in the exercise at the end of 2024, Stuart Young, DARPA programme manager for Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER), told Janes.

Young said this is the first time the RACER Heavy platform, which is based on the Textron M5, was able to tow a trailer behind the vehicle. “You have to make some adjustments to the parameters of the control of the vehicle so that you donʼt flip the vehicle, flip the trailer over,” he added.

Overland AI also made adjustments to the user interface that soldiers deployed during the exercise, Young said.

It took about an hour for contractors to go over the basics of the operating interface, Corporal Lameka Bird told Janes on 2 October as she directed the UGV to return to its base after a rehearsal for the breaching operation. Cpl Bird, who is certified to drive the M1150 assault breaching vehicle, compared the operation of the UGV to “a video game”.

An Xbox-style controller is used to operate the platform when it is not in waypoint navigation mode.