The Robotic Combat Vehicle effort is finally moving out of PowerPoint and into metal and dirt, and that is the good news. Four teams were chosen to produce light RCV prototypes and the service set a hard milestone: two platform prototypes per vendor for soldier touchpoints and mobility testing by August 2024. That timeline forces a reality check. Building and fielding robotic platforms does not magically erase manpower costs. If anything, the next phase of testing will demand more boots and more experienced technicians than planners often admit.

Look at what the Army actually asked for. The Phase I awards emphasized soldier touchpoints. These are not table-top exercises. The Army expects formations to hand real warfighters real roles so they can operate, evaluate, and push prototypes under representative conditions. That approach is correct. It is also labor intensive. The Fort Benning experiments of earlier years used current battalion staffs, company commanders, and platoon leaders as role players because only current practitioners can reveal how a robotic partner changes decision rhythms, comms loads, and the mundane tasking cycle. Those experiments required front-line personnel to be pulled from their formations and committed to multiweek test events. Scaling that model from a handful of simulations to an Army-wide prototype evaluation will multiply those personnel demands.

There are also straightforward, mechanical reasons prototype testing eats manpower. RCV prototypes are power dense electronics and payload buses wrapped in armor. Manufacturers and Army interviewees have repeatedly pointed out thermal, power, and integration headaches during development. Those are the sorts of problems that create maintenance cycles where humans are the bottleneck. Prototype vehicles need recovery crews, electrical specialists, software maintainers, payload technicians, and test officers to instrument and interpret results. You do not test a fleet of new vehicles with a handful of engineers and an automated test bench. You need squads, detachments, and in some cases entire company-sized test support elements.

We should also be brutally honest about the manpower fiction that often accompanies robotics hype. The selling point of uncrewed systems is usually casualty reduction and force multiplication. Both are valid objectives. But in modern combined arms formations, robots shift where people are required rather than eliminate the need for them. Teleoperation nodes have operators. Autonomous systems need supervision, oversight, and rules of engagement adjudication. Fielded robotic units still require maintenance, logistic tails, and people to interpret sensor fusion outputs and integrate them into the combined arms fight. Early RCV doctrine and experimentation imply human-machine teams, not human-free teams. The Army has explicitly framed RCV as an enabler for human-machine integrated formations. That doctrine creates demand for trained RCV operators, RCV maintainers, and staffs comfortable planning with unmanned assets in the loop.

There is also a testing cadence problem. The program office has set up a phased prototyping sequence: Phase I prototypes for soldier touchpoints, followed by selection of a single vendor for an expanded prototype buy in the next fiscal year. That is the right procurement architecture to get a usable design, but it produces intense, short-term surges in personnel requirements. Units will need to supply role players, maintainers, and evaluation support on compressed schedules. If the Army treats these surges as a purely contractor problem, the evaluations will be shallow. If the Army understates its internal manpower needs, units will get hammered by temporary taskings that weaken readiness.

What should the Army do about it? First, stop pretending robotics equals fewer people at the tactical level. Start by formally budgeting manpower for test support and initial fielding. That means temporary test billets, dedicated training rotations, and funding for additional maintainers in early fielding units. Second, create a cross-training plan. Existing vehicle mechanics and electronic warfare maintainers can be cross-cued to RCV-specific skills, but only if time and school seats are provided now. Third, establish permanent test support units at the combat training centers and at major installations so that soldier touchpoints are not an ad hoc drain on deploying brigades. Finally, set expectations for commanders. RCVs will change tactics and may reduce some types of exposure. They will not reduce the need for human judgment, presence, or the labor needed to keep sophisticated machines running in austere, dirty, or contested environments.

A short, practical checklist for program managers and unit leaders:

  • Count soldiers not platforms during test planning. Include operators, maintainers, recovery teams, and analysts.
  • Fund surge manning for Phase I and Phase II evaluations so unit readiness is not degraded.
  • Prioritize thermal, power, and maintainability fixes early. Those engineering issues create the largest recurring manpower drag on prototypes.
  • Train doctrine writers and maneuver staffs to operate with robotic partners. The people who will use RCVs need doctrine and practice or the capability will underperform.

The Army is making the right programmatic moves by insisting on soldier touchpoints and by narrowing the requirement to a modular, payload-focused platform. That will produce a more useful vehicle. The catch is the logistics and human capital bill. RCVs are not a shortcut to fewer troops. They are a shift in the sort of troops you need. If the Army wants robotic formations that truly save lives and extend reach, it must budget for the people who build, operate, maintain, and evaluate those machines. Ignore that and the RCV program will succeed in prototypes and fail in practice when units cannot sustain it through the messy middle of integration and fielding.