DARPA tests autonomous vehicles that team up to find enemy targets

DARPA, a central research and development organization within the United States Department of War, put four autonomous unmanned ground vehicles through their first end-to-end test at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on Oct. 15, sending them as a team from a satellite-imagery tip all the way to a simulated strike on an enemy position, with a human operator approving every engagement.

About two dozen visitors from military and government organizations watched the demonstration at the post’s St. Vith Range. The vehicles run autonomy software developed under DARPA’s Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency program, known as RACER, which wrapped up its main development work earlier this year.

“We can drop a ten-digit grid on a traversable mobility corridor that the ground vehicles use with their onboard sensors to understand the terrain and then drive to it comparable to a human,” said Dr. Jason Gregory, technical advisor at DARPA.

The scenario began with an operator receiving a tip about a simulated threat from satellite imagery and tasking the team. The lead vehicle, carrying a closed box that housed a drone, drove down a road searching for targets while the other three waited. Halfway up a hill it spotted a possible target and stopped to wait for a command. Two more vehicles moved up the road to provide cover, a simulated rocket struck the target on an adjacent hill about 275 m (300 yards) away, and the fourth vehicle advanced as the lead vehicle crested the hill.

A simulated enemy vehicle is damaged in a DARPA autonomous technology demonstration.

In a real operation, the drone in the box could be launched to take a closer look at a target or, armed with a munition, attack it from the air.

The vehicles search for targets on their own, but they do not decide what to do once they find one. Each detection is sent to an operator as an image of what the vehicle has seen, and nothing is engaged without human approval.

“It’s controlled engagement. All the mobility, all the movement, all the detections, all of that is autonomous. But they don’t pull the trigger until a human says pull the trigger,” said Gregory.

Gregory said the test was the first time the team had connected the whole chain, from satellite imagery down to vehicles on the tactical ground, after earlier component and integration testing at the performers’ own sites. DARPA is now adding kinetic and non-kinetic payloads to the vehicles and working on human-in-the-loop detection of both close and deep targets.

The demonstration was organized at the request of U.S. European Command, which asked DARPA how robotic assets could be sent beyond the forward line of troops to give soldiers early warning of enemy forces. Stakeholders recommended Fort Knox as terrain representative of the European theater.

RACER launched in 2021 to develop software that lets off-road military vehicles drive themselves at speeds comparable to a human driver. DARPA said in January that the program had completed its final tests and was ready to transition to military use after eight major field experiments. In October 2025, the U.S. Army’s 36th Engineer Brigade paired a RACER Heavy Platform with an M58 mine-clearing line charge in a breaching demonstration at Fort Hood, Texas, and in November 2025 soldiers from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment used RACER Fleet Vehicles, based on the Polaris RZR, for autonomous long-range reconnaissance at the National Training Center.

“We’ve completed about a five-year program on software development for autonomous mobility to go highspeed off-road in complex environments,” said Gregory. “So, now we can take a vehicle that has a sensor suite and drive-by-wire and equip it with autonomy software so it can be tasked by a Soldier as opposed to manually driven.”

DARPA plans the next test for December, when it will bring in a group of soldiers to suggest how the vehicles should be employed.