U.S. Marines buy more unmanned anti-ship missile launchers

The U.S. Marine Corps is expanding the fleet of unmanned missile-launching trucks that can hide on a Pacific island and sink Chinese warships, with a $70.6 million contract to Oshkosh Defense announced this week for additional ROGUE-Fires carriers that form the ground portion of the Corps’ most consequential new weapons system.

Marine Corps Systems Command, based at Quantico, Virginia, awarded the contract to Oshkosh Defense, the Wisconsin-based defense vehicle manufacturer, for procurement of Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary Fires carriers destined for the Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, known as NMESIS. Work will run through September 2028, with manufacturing split across Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where 70 percent of the work will take place, and engineering support facilities in Alexandria, Virginia, Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The award is the largest single ROGUE-Fires contract to date, surpassing a $16.9 million modification issued in February 2026 and the $19 million initial order that launched the program.

The same day Marine Corps Systems Command awarded a second, separate ROGUE-Fires contract to Oshkosh worth $21.4 million, funded entirely from research, development, test and evaluation accounts rather than procurement funds. That distinction matters: procurement money buys vehicles for operational units, while RDT&E money funds development and testing work on new capabilities. The second contract, with 90 percent of work performed in Oshkosh and 10 percent in Alexandria, Virginia, and the same September 2028 completion date, points to parallel investment in the Block II configuration’s development track alongside the production scale-up funded by the larger award. Combined, the two contracts represent $92 million committed to ROGUE-Fires in a single day.

The ROGUE-Fires carrier is not a conventional military vehicle. Built on the chassis of the Oshkosh Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, the same platform that has replaced the Humvee across the U.S. military, the ROGUE-Fires version removes the crew cab entirely, replacing it with sensors, cameras, and a four-cell launcher capable of firing the Naval Strike Missile. No human crew rides inside. The vehicle is operated remotely using teleoperator control or a leader-follower mode in which a human-crewed vehicle guides the unmanned launcher through terrain. The result is a weapons system that can be positioned in a location too dangerous to put human beings, launched against a ship target well over the horizon, and relocated before the enemy can locate the launch point.

The Naval Strike Missile, or NSM, is a Norwegian-designed subsonic anti-ship weapon developed by Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace, the same company that manufactures the NASAMS air defense system. The NSM flies at low altitude using terrain-following and sea-skimming profiles that make it very difficult to detect on radar, carries a 125-kilogram (276-pound) semi-armor-piercing warhead, and uses imaging infrared guidance in its terminal phase to identify and hit the most vulnerable part of a ship. Its range is officially stated at over 185 kilometers (115 miles), though budget documentation indicates the Marine Corps is actively developing extended-range modifications, with more energy-dense fuel tested in fiscal year 2025 and hardware and software enhancements entering testing in fiscal year 2026.

The NMESIS program is one of the most operationally significant outputs of the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 restructuring, the sweeping reorganization under which the Corps retired all its tanks, reduced its infantry regiment structure, and redirected investment toward the ability to seize and hold Pacific islands and straits under contested conditions. The strategic concept behind NMESIS is straightforward: small teams of Marines can position ROGUE-Fires carriers on islands throughout the first island chain stretching from Japan through the Philippines and Borneo, use the vehicles to interdict Chinese naval movements through critical straits and sea lanes, and disperse quickly enough before Chinese precision strikes can locate them that the force remains viable over an extended campaign. The vehicles’ unmanned nature means the Marines operating them can be positioned at a safe distance, reducing the human cost of holding contested terrain.

The system has moved from concept to operational deployment faster than most Marine Corps programs. Initial delivery of NMESIS occurred on November 26, 2024, when the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment at Marine Corps Base Hawaii received its first fire units. By March 2025, the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment based at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, Japan had integrated an NMESIS battery into its 12th Littoral Combat Team, placing the system in position to range the waters around the Ryukyu Islands and the approaches to the East China Sea. The first international deployment came in April 2025 during Exercise Balikatan in the Philippines, when NMESIS launchers from the 3rd MLR were positioned at Basco in the Batanes Island group near the northern tip of Luzon, overlooking the Luzon Strait, one of the primary routes through which Chinese naval forces would transit between the South China Sea and the Western Pacific in any Taiwan contingency.

The Marine Corps plans to field 261 NMESIS launchers by 2030, according to procurement planning disclosed by the NMESIS product manager at Marine Corps Systems Command. Initial operating capability, defined as four batteries fully equipped, was targeted for 2025. Full operational capability across all 14 planned batteries is expected by 2030.

The $92 million in awards announced this week puts more of these unmanned launchers into the hands of operational regiments while simultaneously advancing the next generation of the vehicle, a combination of scale and development investment that signals the program is no longer an experiment but a permanent fixture of American Pacific strategy.