American Rheinmetall told Breaking Defense it will offer its Mission Master SP-H model outfitted with the company’s own Path autonomy kits for the ILTM program. (Carley Welch/ Breaking Defense)
DETROIT — The Army has awarded six vendors for its Infantry Last Tactical Mile (ILTM) initiative, a program seeking to replace humans with unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) for both logistics and casualty evacuation (casevac) missions in contested areas, the service’s CPE Mission Autonomy office announced today.
The six companies awarded through prototype Other Transaction Agreements are: Maren-Go, Overland AI, Forterra, Hendrick’s Motorsports, American Rheinmetall and HDT, according to a service release.
The vendors will each deliver “production-ready prototype” autonomous systems that can operate in the “last tactical mile” — the treacherous area between support units and the forward lines where supplies, equipment and personnel must be moved while often facing risky adversarial encounters.
Such systems will support “manned close combat formations through rapidly deployable logistical resupply platforms capable of performing casualty evacuation operations and network extension to the forward line of own troops,” Col. Ken Bernier, the Army’s project manager for Autonomous Robotic Capabilities, said in the release.
