Oshkosh Defense received two awards totalling more than USD29 million to provide the US Marine Corps (USMC) with a remotely operated carrier based on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) chassis.
The contract modification awards for the Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary (ROGUE) Fires will enable the vehicles to perform obstacle avoidance, auto drive, and waypoint navigation with higher fidelity than the original autonomy stack delivered to the service, Pat Williams, chief programmes officer of Oshkosh Defense, told Janes on 10 January. The upgrade comes from the addition of more newer sensors and radars compared with the original systems, which takes the platform to generation 3 autonomy, added Janet Keech, senior director for programme management at Oshkosh.
The teleoperated truck can fire a Naval Strike Missile (NSM) using an NSM launcher unit and a fire-control system. US marines control the ROGUE Fires vehicle from a separate JLTV.
“Anytime you're adding more sensors and giving more information to the user, they're getting that data that much faster, that much more of a complete picture, so that's naturally going to increase the speed that you can operate the vehicles,” she explained in an interview. She declined to go into specifics on which types of sensors and radars had been newly added, but light detection and ranging (LIDAR), some types of radars, and thermal cameras are on the next-generation platform.
At the time of publication, the company was unable to say how many more sensors and radars the contract modification will have compared with the original delivery.
Deliveries for 48 of the upgraded systems are set to begin in June and will end in 2026, Williams said. Robotics manufacturer Forterra is the provider of the autonomy stack for the platform.
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