# Project BF4 — Combat Vehicle Robotics Adv Tech

**Program element:** 0603462A — Next Generation Combat Vehicle Advanced Technology  
**Project:** BF4  
**Component:** U.S. Army  
**Appropriation:** 2040 — RDT&E, Army  
**Budget Activity:** 3 — Advanced Technology Development  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603462A/BF4  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603462A

## Summary

Project BF4 — Combat Vehicle Robotics Adv Tech requests $23.2M in FY2027, 20% of the $118.2M requested for program element 0603462A, down 30% on FY2026. 6 R-2A activities decompose the request.

**Markets:** Ground Combat Vehicles, Uncrewed & Autonomy — matched on the project title only, and no market size is quoted.

## Funding profile

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 50.7 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 32.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 23.2 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 30.4 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 26.7 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 34.1 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 34.5 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0603462A; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## What project BF4 buys

This project cultivates the industrial ecosystem for robotics and autonomy by shepherding an industry-developed common Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) that drives interoperability, fosters competition, lowers the barrier to entry for partners, and prevents vendor lock. CoVeR delivers shared standards, enabling technologies and Army-specific technical expertise, ensuring the scalable integration of best-of-breed, multi-domain robotic and autonomous system capabilities into Army formations to maintain battlefield overmatch. This project is also coordinated with Program Element (PE) 0602145A (Next Generation Combat Vehicle Technology), and transitions to PE 0604017A. Work in this project is performed by the Ground Vehicle System Center (GVSC).

## Activities (R-2A) — 6

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unmanned Maneuver Demonstration. | — | 22.1 | 23.2 | +5% | [a5](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603462A/BF4/a5) |
| Platform Electronic Control | 4.3 | 7.7 | — | −100% | — |
| Unmanned Maneuver | 16.0 | — | — | — | — |
| Soldier-Robotic Interface Integration | 5.0 | 3.2 | — | −100% | — |
| Small UGV as Deployable Sensor | 2.0 | — | — | — | — |
| Human - Machine Integrated Formations (H-MIF) | 23.4 | — | — | — | — |

> Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only — no five-year plan. In the request year they partition this project exactly; in earlier years they can under-cover it.

### Unmanned Maneuver Demonstration.

Will advance the Army's un-crewed systems capabilities through a coordinated effort focused on architecture, security, resilience, and integration, prioritizing the rapid adoption of ready-now commercial technologies. Expand the foundational un-crewed architecture and interoperability standards - leveraging open standards, modular…

Full year-by-year narrative: https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603462A/BF4/a5

### Platform Electronic Control

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** Funding decrease reflects realignment to Unmanned Maneuver Demonstration within this project.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** Will improve, extend, and demonstrate an optimized closed loop safety certified drive by wire (DBW) for robotic ground vehicles. Focus on optimization and demonstration of safety certified components. These certifiable components align to Army safety standards and improve the safety pedigree for unmanned system. Focus on expanding safety certified control to assured teleoperation which ensure safe and valid commands from a known operator are executed or the system/platform revert to a safe state. Additional focus placed on assured video which ensure real-time video from electro-optical sensors to robotic users while operating unmanned systems. RVMS manage the state of the unmanned platform in real-time, provide critical information to the user or autonomy system, maintain active state of platform/sensors/and payloads, as well ensuring the platform operates within its safe operating envelope. The Vehicle Safety Transponder ensures the transition of an unmanned platform to a safe state. Maturation of RVMS to support video scaling and video degradation detection to ensure live video feeds with minimal latency at best resolution a major focus to support assured video. Demonstrate enhancements through Engineering Evaluation Testing (EET) to show technical maturity of components. Continue to mature and validate Robotic and Autonomy Systems (RAS) safety standards for unmanned ground vehicle systems based on EET activities. Continue to update Ground Vehicle Robotics Safety Board published guidelines to show they meet best practices for development of safety critical software for unmanned ground vehicle systems while incorporating lessons learned. Validation of Ground Vehicle Robotics Safety Board processes result in improved safety pedigree for unmanned ground vehicle system, which enable higher confidence by safety and testing community resulting in safety confirmation for unmanned ground systems. This enable testing with warfighters and development of autonomous ground systems.

**FY2025 accomplishments.** Mature and continue optimization of safety processes, components, and software focused on low level control (base vehicle platforms sensors, Drive By-Wire (DBW) systems, payload/subsystem management/monitoring) for uncrewed systems. Expand integration of safety certified components onto uncrewed systems to improve safe mobility with positive control for uncrewed ground vehicles. These certified components and subsystems increase reliability of the platform, mean time between failure, and improve operational safety for users and close operators. Maturation of safety components to expand utilization of Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) and align to well defined systems safety standards to improve the necessary Level of Rigor for autonomous vehicle systems. Safety processes and components are aligned with the Autonomous Ground Vehicle Reference Architecture (AGVRA) framework and GCS Common Infrastructure Architecture (GCIA) to maintain seamless interfacing with ongoing improvement to the ARMY autonomy libraries, and user interfaces with additional maturation focus on standardizing interface to support industry autonomy stacks and components. Mature and improve Robotic and Autonomy Systems (RAS) safety standards for uncrewed ground vehicle systems. Expand the Ground Vehicle Robotics (GVR) Safety Council which manages, reviews, and publishes guidelines to improve on best practices for development of safety critical processes, components, and software for uncrewed ground vehicle systems. The Ground Vehicle Robotics Safety Council develops, manages, and maintains the safety processes and documentation for GVR ensuring GVR programs in the organization adhere to organizational standards and are ready for verification and validation by the test community. This will improve testing with warfighters and reduce developmental of autonomous ground systems.

### Unmanned Maneuver

**FY2025 accomplishments.** Improve and demonstrate an autonomous maneuver capabilities, with autonomous vehicles operating at speeds comparable to manned vehicles and executing comparable movement techniques in obstructed environments; continue to improve and demonstrate coordinated movements including both robotic platforms and Soldiers in these environments, such as collaborate zone-based surveillance; continue to improve performance and demonstrate autonomous maneuver in degraded or hostile environments, enabling autonomous maneuvers in areas where sensor performance is poor (e.g., due to weather or smoke) and communications are not reliable; improve night-time operation of autonomous vehicles by reducing vehicle signatures through implementation of passive sensing techniques developed by Autonomous Behaviors and Perception subtask; mature the Autonomous Ground Vehicle Reference Architecture (AGVRA) framework by developing conceptual, logical and physical data models while connecting them to existing instantiated architectures and mature the safety and cyber metamodels and associated libraries to support these evolving viewpoints; mature AGVRA functional model elements and mature functional models to demonstrate a cohesive functional model, and advance overall mission modeling and test planning; implement cyber hardened architecture aspects for ground autonomy, including the development of a broad mission threat model, verification plan, and penetration testing plans; improve and demonstrate interoperability implementation to account for advances in all product lines.

### Soldier-Robotic Interface Integration

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** Funding decrease reflects realignment to Unmanned Maneuver Demonstration within this project.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** Will improve and develop autogenerated operations order into translated mission tasks for the robotic operators to understand from their mission completion and robotic capability within the Uncrewed Vehicle Control (UVC) architecture. Highlight an enriched user interface and allow the robot operator to achieve a mission with much more effectiveness. Integrate into the RVIS model and add focus on the control of a variety of mission payloads (e.g., CROWS). Enable us to reduce the operator to robot ratio. Provides the operators the ability to edit and notify their team and command and control and be able to task individual robotic assets.

**FY2025 accomplishments.** Improve and demonstrate the ability to operate three or more robotic assets from by a single operator within through the Warfighter Machine Interface (WMI). This task will develop improve the user interface minimize the by reducing the cognitive workload on a single operator and while allowing the robot operator to achieve the mission with more effective improved understanding of the robot's situational awareness, ability to maneuver and achieve the mission fully; integration into RVIS model. These functions will be visible validated at the Engineering Evaluation Test's (EET) as through the soldier robotic interface technologies will be linked linkage across many of the testing events.

### Small UGV as Deployable Sensor

**FY2025 accomplishments.** Continue to integrate, optimize, and demonstrate advanced autonomy behaviors, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) sensors, and optimize small, unmanned ground system platform and controls (using the Warfighter Machine Interface -WMI); mature and demonstrate enhanced autonomy behaviors for small Unmanned Ground Vehicles by continuing to improve the RTK capabilities for small platform teaming to autonomously deploy from an unmanned combat vehicle and maneuver in rough terrain to perform tasks ISR missions; integrate and demonstrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled electro-optical and audio Modular Mission Payload (MMP) sensors with small UGV autonomy to optimize threat and target detection probability when performing ISR missions; validate maturity of enhancements through Engineering Evaluation Testing (EET) of the autonomous technology and integrated MMPs in terms of performance, and technical maturity, while ensuring safe operation.

### Human - Machine Integrated Formations (H-MIF)

**FY2025 accomplishments.** Advance robotic and autonomous systems warfighter effectiveness, lethality and survivability for Human-Machine Integrated Formations (H-MIF) by developing and integrating command and control (C2) and autonomy software for robotic maneuver and payload control; mature autonomy for ground robots through software development, advancement and integration of industry best of breed capability and innovation leveraging robotic vehicle management system (RVMS) for assured control; instantiate modular open system architecture design for sensors, intra-vehicle and eternal networks; finalize infantry and armor formation control vehicle designs and integrate external network, power distribution, payloads and control interfaces; complete the physical integration of hardware and payloads on armor and infantry robotic platforms; continue lethality control software development and integration of CROWS-J on robotic platforms; begin engineering evaluation and shakeout testing of section level formation capability.

## What is NOT on this page

Congressional marks, the R-2 mission description and acquisition strategy, the industry vs government split of the whole request, and related program elements are recorded at **program-element** grain — an NDAA mark lands on a PE, never on a project. They are at https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603462A.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Department of the Army RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0603462A project BF4 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0603462A")`.

*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Budget figures are requests/estimates, not obligations.*