HMMWV builder AM General debuts combat-ready autonomous vehicle

AM General showed up to Modern Day Marine with two vehicles and a clear message: the company that built the HMMWV for four decades is now building the unmanned systems that will operate alongside whatever comes next.

At Booth 2007 of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., AM General displayed its next-generation Unmanned Ground Vehicle alongside the MIMIC-V High Performance Truck — a pairing that positions the Michigan-based manufacturer at the intersection of autonomous ground systems and the conventional tactical vehicle market it has dominated for generations. The UGV demonstrator is already undergoing testing in preparation for an Army request for proposal expected to be released later this year, giving the Modern Day Marine display immediate procurement relevance beyond the show floor.

The AM General UGV is built around a consortium of partners whose capabilities span the full autonomous ground vehicle development stack. Textron Systems, Carnegie Robotics, and Moog Inc. each contribute to the platform — a partnership that brings together Textron’s unmanned systems experience, Carnegie Robotics’ autonomy software expertise, and Moog’s weapons integration capability in a single integrated vehicle. The result, visible on the show floor, is a wheeled autonomous platform mounting a remote weapon station, configured to reduce risk to Marines across the logistics, resupply, reconnaissance, and mission support roles that currently require personnel to operate in contested environments.

Moog’s contribution is specifically its Reconfigurable Self-Loading Equipment Dock — the MR SLED — a modular, mission-ready Air Defense and counter-UAS solution built around the proven RIwP turret that has already been fielded on the SGT Stout and MLIDS programs. The RIwP — Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform — is a remote weapon station with an established track record in U.S. Army air defense applications, and its integration onto the AM General UGV through the MR SLED architecture gives the platform a counter-drone and air defense capability that extends its mission set well beyond logistics and reconnaissance. Moog describes the MR SLED as common, scalable, and future-proof — language that points to a modular integration approach designed to accept different weapons and sensor payloads as requirements evolve.

The MIMIC-V High Performance Truck shares the booth and shares a powertrain development story that has implications well beyond either vehicle on display. AM General has developed a new turbocharged 6.5-liter 8-cylinder engine for the platform, capable of producing 250 horsepower and over 550 pound-feet of torque through a common rail direct injection fuel system that provides fuel flexibility alongside the power output. The advanced cooling and injection architecture is designed for the demanding thermal and operational conditions that military tactical vehicles operate under. Critically, AM General has designed this engine not as a one-off solution for the MIMIC-V but as a powertrain that will underpin future light tactical vehicles — including the HMMWV platform that remains in service across the U.S. military and dozens of allied nations. A new engine that goes into both an autonomous demonstrator and the HMMWV’s future evolution is an investment in a common propulsion architecture across AM General’s product family.

The HMMWV connection is worth dwelling on. AM General has manufactured the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle since the early 1980s, and the platform has accumulated a global installed base of hundreds of thousands of vehicles across military and government operators in the United States and internationally. A new engine architecture that extends into the HMMWV’s evolution means the 6.5-liter turbocharged unit isn’t just powering a demonstrator — it is potentially powering decades of additional HMMWV service life and the sustainment of an enormous global fleet. For the U.S. military and its allies, a fuel-flexible, higher-output engine option for existing HMMWV platforms addresses a real operational need without requiring full vehicle replacement.

The UGV’s mission framing — logistics and resupply, reconnaissance, mission support, reducing risk to Marines — maps directly onto the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 requirements for autonomous ground systems capable of operating in distributed, contested environments across the Pacific. Marines dispersed across island positions and remote outposts need resupply delivered without exposing crew members to the threat environment that has made conventional vehicle operations increasingly costly in drone-saturated combat zones. An autonomous ground vehicle that can carry supplies forward, conduct reconnaissance, and mount a counter-UAS weapon system gives a small unit commander options that a manned vehicle fleet cannot provide at the same risk level.