Tomorrow’s soldiers may breach minefields with robots made from decades-old APCs

In a flash, the uncrewed Vietnam-era armored personnel carrier flung a cable of explosives the length of a football field—then detonated it in a blast that cleared an eight-yard lane for troops to follow. Thursday’s successful test of an autonomous platform for the decades-old Mine Clearing Line Charge could one day help troops breach enemy defenses while taking fewer casualties. 

“The combined arms breach is one of the most casualty-producing operations that we will partake in,” said Maj. Steven Calhoun, the program director of the Sandhills Project, a 18th Airborne Corps quest for new ways to neutralize enemy minefields. Using robots rather than humans is “a big win for us.”

Ukraine’s counter-offensive ground to a halt last year after its forces struggled to get through Russian minefields that were more than four football fields deep. Units also had to contend with Russian helicopters, anti-tank teams, drones, and artillery that targeted them as they attempted to funnel though mine-free lanes. 

Calhoun said U.S. soldiers should be prepared for weeks-long breaching operations in future conflicts: “It’s going to be a month-long slog, probably.” 

He said his team had traveled to Europe to talk to Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, the group that coordinates allied military aid to Kyiv. 

Unlike long-term acquisition programs, the Sandhills Project is aimed at finding solutions that are immediately ready to go, Calhoun said. The 18th Airborne Corps is designated as a strategic response force, and include the Army’s rapid reaction unit, the 82nd Airborne. 

Fortunately, he said, solutions are right at hand thanks to innovations from the commercial sector and other government organizations. 

“None of this is science fiction,” he said. 

The robotic MICLIC, for instance, has its origins in a parking-lot cleaner. Five years ago, Hermes Robotics CEO Guilhem Herail bought a street sweeper, then fitted it with an autonomy package to tidy up parking lots. Guilhem pitched his robot to the Air Force as a tool for base maintenance. The company didn’t win a contract, but was in time connected to the Sandhills Project. Earlier this year, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George name-checked the three-person firm’s autonomous M113 in congressional testimony. 

Thursday’s test of the M113-based MICLIC platform took place at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.

Herail said that the M113 refit could cost as little as $50,000, assuming the Army bought thousands of kits and did some of the final quality-control checks. It takes around eight hours to install an autonomy package capable of allowing an M113 to independently navigate to a given point, or just three hours to make it remote-controllable by radio, he said. 

But some experiments done by the Sandhills Project have also shown how commercial gear isn’t always battlefield-ready. Calhoun said remote-control signals were sometimes drowned out by radio waves from other systems. He also noted that mechanical problems can be harder to solve on uncrewed vehicles, which may need to be rigged with more sensors to let their operators or controllers know what’s happening.

“If no one is near, we’ve got to figure out how we can maintain that situational awareness,” Calhoun said. 

While Calhoun said he cringed over using the outdated M113, he also said its cheap price was key to breaching operations. 

“Our method of attacking this problem set is using a mass of unmanned systems. And you can't do that with exquisite, expensive systems.” 

By contrast, the M113 fits the Army’s needs. “It's cheap, there's a plethora of them, and if we lose it, we lose it,” he said. 

More than 80,000 M113s have been manufactured, making it one of the most-produced armored vehicles in the world. Used M113s can cost as little as $300,000. 

Calhoun said a robotic M113 could eventually be used for other operations as well, such as driving smoke generators up to the line of contact.

He also appealed for drones inexpensive enough to use and lose in a breaching operation. 

“They have to be cheap,” he said, adding that soldiers would only use drones if they felt comfortable with the consequences of breaking them. 

Calhoun also said drones were proving useful for finding mines, largely through the use of machine vision and artificial intelligence. The most useful system has been SPOTR software: a Surveillance, Persistent Observation and Targeting Recognition tool that was originally developed by the Office of Naval Research to help the Marine Corps. 

Calhoun’s group has found that low-flying drones equipped with ground-penetrating radar are the best method for detecting buried mines—though he’s heard a lot of pitches from companies that claim otherwise.

“We've talked to a lot of snake-oil salesmen in this business,” he said. 

The Sandhills project is also experimenting with new explosives. “That's probably the most groundbreaking thing we're working on,” although he said he was unable to offer further details for security reasons.

Even as Army leaders applaud the testing of commercial gear to breach enemy fortifications, moving through the service’s own bureaucracy often remains a slog. Calhoun said getting the sign-offs and permissions to test new equipment can take up to half a year. In one case, a drone company went out of business before the Army allowed his team to test their aircraft. 

Still, some outfits move more quickly than others. Calhoun praised the 18th Airborne’s home base of Fort Liberty, North Carolina. 

“Fort Liberty is trying to get you to yes,” he said.