The most vulnerable part of a military truck is the driver. The Defense Innovation Unit , tasked with finding and incorporating new commercial technology into the military, has set a deadline of June 13 for ideas about how to roboticize the military’s existing fleet of transport trucks. Those vehicles include rides like the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, or the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle .
GEARS is the latest in what has been nearly two decades of effort by the Pentagon to solve an enduring problem from its recent wars. Deploying troops and equipment in a war zone, be it a whole country or even just a long front within one, means keeping people in places where supply infrastructure is limited, and that requires finding a way to resupply those soldiers.
When there’s no threat of violence against cargo transport, military supply can mirror logistics in the domestic United States, where truck drivers bring gear as needed. When violence does threaten, as it does in both insurgency and conventional warfare, trucks face threats from ambushes, roadside bombs, or attacks from the sky in the form of missiles, artillery, or bombs.
“The Department of Defense has an existing fleet of military vehicles for its logistics operations. Today, however, these vehicles require human operators. In deployed situations, this creates unnecessary risk to service members’ lives and introduces limits to operational tactics,” reads the. “Human operators also have work-to-rest cycles, resulting in additional time constraints.
Early in the US war in Iraq, getting supplies reliably and securely through the country meant deploying convoys, where several cargo trucks would carry guards and be escorted by other vehicles. While convoys allow supplies on the move to be protected, and take advantage of numbers to do so, they also present a