Can the Army get rocket launchers that roam the battlefield for ground support and air defense? I’m skeptical of filling a complex battlefield with unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that we can command and control in large numbers. Artillery robots might be a proof of concept before trying to bring in direct-fire UGVs.
The Army wants robot artillery:
U.S. Army researchers will brief industry next month on a project to develop prototype mobile and air-carried missile launchers able to fire missiles like the Tomahawk, Patriot, Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), and Precision Strike Missile (PrSM).
Officials of the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., will brief industry on 21 and 22 Jan. 2026 at Redstone Arsenal on the Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML) project.
CAML is to be an autonomous and crewed or uncrewed mobile and air-transportable offensive and defensive missile launcher to augment or replace existing Army launchers.
While I have come to have many doubts about using UGVs in a direct-fire combat role replacing manned armored combat vehicles, this is one of the more limited roles that I think UGVs can become useful.
I mentioned the article’s concept recently. And I suggested this general idea a couple decades ago in Military Review (see pp. 28-33) while discussing new armored combat vehicles for the Army during the Future Combat System (FCS) era, thinking the new combat vehicle to replace the Abrams could direct external firepower to supplement its own organic weapons (SPOILER ALERT: I called the FCS the “wonder tank”—and not as a compliment), although I didn’t foresee a mobile fire support version of what I suggested (on p. 29):
For long-range or beyond-line-of-sight firing, missiles should be part of the force. The power of today’s precision weapons is already breathtaking. In the future, separating missiles from the FCS makes the most sense for a networked force. Missile modules, each containing two or more missiles, could be dropped off in the wake of the advancing FCS unit or even scattered by aircraft along the axis of advance in the enemy’s rear areas. The FCS crew could control firing.
My proposal1 used disposable fire containers. But I imagine CAML could be adapted to be able to drop off the firing containers for stationary units/outposts for local ground support and air defense, if appropriate. Dropping them off in a war of movement wouldn’t make sense as long as the CAML units—whether manned or robotic—can keep shooting and moving.2
Of course, the current Army proposal is a different means of keeping fire support readily available to any maneuver unit on the battlefield. And I assume this means the individual CAML vehicles can avoid counter-battery fire by firing and moving quickly if needed, letting other CAML vehicles in different locations continue the specific fire mission in that networked fires system.
Such frequently moving artillery pieces would work best in a Black Box of Effects that ground forces can call on for fire support:
In my ideal world, fire support is a black box where a call to destroy or suppress a target automatically calls in the appropriate weapon capable of taking out the target in a timely manner without the soldier making the support request even knowing what asset provided the support.
It could be a plane or space system out of sight, an attack helicopter, a ship or submarine offshore, a distant ground force missile or artillery asset, or even an 81mm mortar back at the company level. ...
A Black Box of Effects would need to rapidly integrate a variety of weapons systems from joint forces. The ability to drop moving assets out of the available assets and plug them back in would be crucial to allowing roving robotic artillery systems to survive and contribute capabilities to the battle.
The reaction to cheap drones continues. But this particular idea has been discussed a long time. This time for sure?
NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.
NOTE: Months later I discovered I duplicated the exact same essay published earlier. I am assuming I had a finished draft in Blogger, copied it here to post, and forgot to make a note on the draft article that it was on Substack. Then later I noticed a perfectly good essay I thought was unpublished and moved it again to Substack. Oops.
Long after my article, I discovered that I had imagined a project already under discussion--Netfires.
And please, with a hat tip to Roomba robot vacuum cleaners, call the robot rocket systems “Boomba”.