Overview
- The Autonomous Volcano completed a proof-of-concept in May when soldiers remotely fired M88 canisters and the system autonomously emplaced two separate minefields with no human intervention.
- Engineers mounted the M139 Volcano dispenser on a Palletized Load System A1 truck and integrated a By‑Wire/Active Safety Kit and Forterra autonomy stack to enable driverless operation and coordination.
- The system can dispense up to 960 mines to form barriers roughly 120 meters wide and 1,100 meters long and automatically logs obstacle coordinates into the Army’s Common Operating Picture.
- Program leads say the capability preserves combat power by keeping combat engineers out of danger and enabling multi-vehicle remote firings that speed battlefield shaping.
- After the Camp Grayling demonstration, the program will move from prototyping to operational testing at Project Convergence Capstone 6 on July 13 and will appear in a Secretary of the Army ‘Best of Breed’ demo on July 29, with U.K. interoperability work continuing.