The Robotic Combat Vehicle program crossed a clear programmatic milestone in late 2023 when the Army selected four industry teams to design and build Phase I platform prototypes. Those awards moved the effort from concept and surrogate experimentation into a schedule-driven prototyping phase, with industry committed to deliver two platform prototypes apiece for government test and evaluation later in 2024.
This is progress in the narrow sense. It is not a fleet in the field yet. As of March 28, 2024 the headline milestones are selection and prototype build commitments rather than completed, soldier-validated deliveries. Companies publicly named in the Phase I cohort are Textron Systems’ Team RIPSAW, McQ/HDT’s WOLF-X team, General Dynamics Land Systems with TRX, and Oshkosh Defense with its RCV submission; each vendor framed its Phase I work as delivering two prototypes to support Army mobility testing and soldier touchpoints.
That narrative of “selected, building, delivering soon” rests on an acquisition schedule that industry and the Army described in public materials. Several competitors and the service signaled an August or summer 2024 timeline for Phase I prototype deliveries, meaning the physical handover and formal Army platform testing were slated to occur after this snapshot date. In short: selection is done, fabrication and integration were underway, but the formal prototype deliveries the program measures itself by had not yet been reported as completed by March 28, 2024.
It is worth remembering how we got here. The Army did not start from zero. Surrogate demonstrators were provided and exercised earlier in the decade to validate the concept, and the service had taken delivery of multiple RCV surrogates in 2020 that were used to mature tactics, integration approaches, and the government autonomy stack. Those surrogates informed the Phase I requirements and shaped the decision to pursue a more modular, common-chassis approach rather than three fully separate light, medium, and heavy families.
Why qualify the milestone with caution? Two practical realities matter. First, autonomy and the software backbone remain the program’s gating factor. Integrating the government-developed autonomy kernel onto new platforms and proving it under operationally realistic conditions is painstaking work. Past integration timelines show autonomy requires iterative fixes and close hardware/software coupling before a robot behaves reliably in complex terrain. That means a chassis delivery is a milestone, not the finish line.
Second, communications and control tethering constrain how far early RCVs can operate from their manned backstops. Tests with earlier demonstrators found the practical control range and line-of-sight limits can force control vehicles closer to the fight than the doctrinal ideal. Those constraints change how prototypes will be evaluated in soldier touchpoints and will influence what the Army expects from Phase II.
So where does that leave the program as of this writing? The program hit a concrete acquisition milestone in late 2023 with Phase I awards and committed prototype builds. Throughout the first half of 2024 companies were in the build, integration, and ground test phases preparing for the scheduled summer deliveries. The next measurable milestone to watch is the actual handover of each vendor’s two prototypes and the Army’s initial mobility and soldier touchpoint testing cycle. Those steps will determine whether early promises translate into robust, fieldable capability or into another round of design trades and software rework.
My take is blunt and practical. Selection and prototype builds are necessary and welcome. They are not sufficient. The real metric will be how quickly the Army and industry close the autonomy, communications, and sustainment gaps revealed in surrogate testing. If the program uses the Phase I prototypes to stress those weak points rather than to polish a showpiece, the RCV effort will have earned the attention it has been given. If the prototypes arrive but autonomy and datalink issues persist, the program risks producing impressive hardware that cannot operate as intended in contested, messy environments.