Autonomous vehicle makes rounds with mortar rounds in live-fire test drive by Army paratroopers
By MATTHEW M. BURKE STARS AND STRIPES •
August 11, 2025 Seattle-based tech company Overland AI demonstrates its fully autonomous tactical vehicle Ultra at Vaziani Training Area in Georgia with U.S. soldiers from 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, July 29, 2025, during exercise Agile Spirit. (Cameron Boyd/U.S. Army) GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — When a U.S. Army airborne unit was resupplied during a recent live-fire exercise in the Caucasus, there was something notably absent from the delivery vehicle: a driver. The soldiers, from the Grafenwoehr-based 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment (Airborne), used a prototype of a fully autonomous tactical vehicle called the Ultra to see how the Army might roll as its revamped fighting doctrine continues to take shape. “There’s a ton of potential here and we’re excited to keep testing it,” squadron commander Lt. Col. Austin Commons said Monday, just after the end of Agile Spirit, a biennial exercise that this year was held in Turkey and Georgia. The Vaziani Training Area in Georgia hosted what Commons said was the Ultra’s first test in field conditions. It traversed a couple of miles of varied terrain using cameras, infrared and lidar to resupply 60 mm and 120 mm mortars.
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https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2025-08-11/autonomous-vehicle-prototype-georgia-exercise-18728697.htmlSource - Stars and Stripes
