The Washington bureaucracy moves slowly but it is about to punch a milestone for land robotics. The Army opened Phase I of its Robotic Combat Vehicle prototyping competition in April, with language that anticipates selecting up to four vendors to deliver platform prototypes as part of a multi‑phase effort to turn experiments into a program of record.
Before anyone celebrates a miracle, remember this is an experimentation pathway, not a full production buy. The service has been explicit that it is concentrating resources on the light variant, RCV‑L, and separating the vehicle hardware pathway from the software pathway so that control and autonomy code can be reused across platforms. Expect the Army to grade entrants as much on software openness and integration maturity as on raw steel and suspension travel.
Who will show up and what they will bring is partly predictable because the RCV effort did not spring up overnight. The Army previously ran surrogate efforts and awarded early OT agreements to industry players to get vehicles into soldier hands; those contractors and their industrial partners are the logical short list for Phase I work. But do not assume incumbency equals victory. The Army will be looking for demonstrable system‑level integration capability, safety engineering, and evidence that a vendor can deliver usable soldier touchpoints quickly.
What the Army will actually test in Phase I is straightforward and unforgiving. Expect evaluators to focus on mobility and transportability, mission modularity and payload baseline, the human‑machine interface for manned‑unmanned teaming, and the maturity of autonomy and perception stacks. For RCV‑L that typically means a vehicle concept that targets the light end of the weight spectrum to enable airlift and maneuver with brigade formations. But the tight coupling between mission modules and power, cooling and data buses will be the differentiator. Prototypes that are merely beefed up hobby robots or platform demos without an integration plan will fail soldier‑centric evaluations.
Software will make or break this competition. The Army has long signaled that it wants a common software acquisition pathway and a testbed approach so that autonomy, mission planners, and control stations can be evolved independently of a single chassis. Industry entrants who deliver easily instrumented software stacks, open APIs, and tooling for rapid iteration and data collection will have a huge advantage. Pure hardware winners that cannot absorb new autonomy code quickly will be obsolete before fielding decisions are made. The service has already invested in autonomy test infrastructure and tools to accelerate exactly this problem.
Expectations on lethality and survivability will be conservative in Phase I. The Army is experimenting to refine CONOPS and requirements. That means prototypes that demonstrate modular mission payloads, effective sense‑and‑avoid, and a realistic plan for spare parts and sustainment will do better than those promising miracle performance against heavy armor. In plain terms, Phase I is about proving the concept of a useful, networked, soldier‑facing unmanned vehicle rather than showing a final, heavily armed product.
The trade space vendors must navigate is uncomfortable: lighter, transportable platforms are easier to move and cheaper per unit but are more fragile on a contested battlefield; beefier designs survive more damage but create problems for lift, logistics, and cost. That tension will show up in every technical evaluation score and in soldier reaction to human‑machine teaming. The contractor that best explains and quantifies those tradeoffs, and that provides a plan to mitigate them, will earn credibility with evaluators. (Credibility beats sexy concept videos.)
What to watch next. The Army said it would complete the Phase I selections in late summer and then use a Phase II follow‑on to downselect toward a single design in a later year. With that schedule in play, industry should expect soldier touchpoints, iterative software drops, and mobility testing to form the backbone of evaluation criteria over the coming 12–18 months. Successful vendors will be those that can iterate quickly, instrument performance data, and show how their vehicle will fit into existing formations without overwhelming logistics.
Bottom line: This competition is a systems integration contest disguised as a vehicle build. If you are looking for the RCV that will rewrite armored warfare doctrine, you will be disappointed by Phase I. If you want the RCV that gives squadrons extra eyes, modular payloads they can use, and software that can be updated without sending the vehicle back to the factory, pay attention. The survivors of Phase I will be the teams who understand the dirty, boring parts of fielding robotics at scale and who can prove it under soldier scrutiny.