The Titan unmanned ground vehicle by robotic warfare systems developer Milrem Robotics with the PROTECTOR remote weapon station by Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace is exhibited at this year’s AUSA trade show in Washington DC.
The system on display is equipped with a 50.cal and a Javelin missile launcher providing excellent combination of heavy machinegun and antitank capabilities to warfighters. Just a month before this week’s exhibition the system was showcased in a live fire demonstration conducted near Kongsberg’s headquarters in Norway. Further testing and demonstrations, including Javelin firing are planned for the near-future.
“Milrem’s tracked UGV has proven itself to be an ideal platform for various weapon systems integration,” said Kuldar Vaarsi, CEO of Milrem Robotics. The UGV has previously passed live fire tests with FN Herstal’s deFNder Medium RWS, ST Kinetics ADDER and Aselsan’s SARP. An anti-tank system with MBDA’s IMPACT (Integrated MMP Precision Attack Combat Turret) system is also in development, thus the Titan/THeMIS is the most sought after platform by weapon systems developers.
”Equipping unmanned and robotic platforms with weapon systems enhances the safety of warfighters and keeps them from harm’s way. These systems will always have a human operator controlling the weapon thus eliminating the concern about “killer robots”,” added Vaarsi.
With approximately 15,000 systems already in service across the U.S. DoD, Kongsberg’s CROWS weapon station-family is uniquely positioned to support UGV weaponization, either as an applique solution or in a ground-up design.
Eskild Aas, Director Digital Vehicle Solutions at Kongsberg stated: “Many of the control capabilities already being delivered to the U.S. (for CROWS) support a relatively straight forward and low-risk UGV integration for our weapon stations.” He went on to say: “We are obviously quite excited to continue our work with Milrem Robotics and believe further demonstrations of this system will help the user-community understand what is possible for a robotic platform.”