U.S. Army modernization officials are about to finish the service's first experiment to see whether the Robotic Combat Vehicle effort can make units more deadly on the future battlefield. For the past five weeks, a platoon of soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division has been conducting cavalry-style combat missions using two-person crews in specially modified Bradley fighting vehicles to control robotic surrogate vehicles fashioned from M113 armored personnel vehicles in the Robotic Combat Vehicle Soldier Operational Experiment.
The platoon has operated in the rugged terrain of Fort Carson, Colorado, testing different technologies to control the robotic vehicles, sending them out hundreds of meters ahead to scout for enemy positions.
"This experiment was 100% successful ... because we learned; the whole purpose was to learn where the technology is now and how we think we want to fight with it in the future," Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman,...MORE
