A Bumblebee drone takes off from an unmanned ground vehicle at Vilseck, Germany, April 15, 2026. Soldiers worked alongside vendors to test new counter-unmanned aerial system (cUAS) technology for an upcoming exercise in Lithuania, Project Flytrap 5.0. (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Sgt. Addison Shinn)
DETROIT — After ditching its original software strategy for autonomous vehicles, the Army has decided to lean on industry to build case-specific autonomous capabilities for different mission sets, an Army official told Breaking Defense.
The initial idea to have the Army develop a software backbone for its envisioned fleet of autonomous vehicles in what was called the Army Robotic Software (ARCS) program “made sense before there was robust industry investment in all of autonomy,” Michael Rose, chief technology officer for the Army’s Mission Autonomy capability program office, told Breaking Defense on the sidelines of the GVSETS conference.
“The whole premise behind ARCS was not necessarily single software, but a modular approach to acquire the pieces of autonomy from different vendors,” Rose told Breaking Defense on the sidelines of the GVSETS conference. “Now there’s awesome vendors in the space that are doing great stuff, as they demonstrate.”
