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A US Army garrison in South Korea has hosted test and evaluation activities involving Hanwha’s new unmanned ground vehicle.
Hanwha Aerospace has deployed its multi-purpose unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), dubbed Arion-SMET, at Camp Humphreys — a US Army garrison in Pyeongtaek, South Korea.
The test formed part of broader negotiations targeting deeper collaboration between Hanwha and the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) on next-generation UGV technologies.
As part of the demonstration, Hanwha’s Arion-SMET tested unmanned technologies designed to support infantry troops in the battlefield, including remote-controlled and autonomous driving on paved and unpaved roads.
The exercise also included obstacle avoidance, autonomous homing for communications failures, gunshot source localisation, and vehicle/soldier following.
“The Arion-SMET has already proved its outstanding mission capabilities during a ROK Army trial earlier this year under a program to test the performance of weapons systems for overseas exports,” executive vice president at Hanwha Aerospace’s land systems business group Youngwoo Seo said.
“We will do our best to successfully complete the upcoming FCT, hoping to join US DoD’s fast-track acquisition process in the future.”
This comes just months after the Arion-SMET was selected as one of the ground equipment to be tested by the US military under the FCT program.
The program aims to assess matured foreign technologies capable of filling US forces’ existing capability gaps.
The Arion-SMET (autonomous and robotic systems for intelligence off-road navigation – small multi-purpose equipment transport) is modelled on a previous 4x4 UGV developed in 2019 from a joint civilian-military project in South Korea.
The 6x6 electric-powered vehicle is capable of supporting a number of infantry operations, including as ammunition transport, medical evacuation, reconnaissance, and fire support.
Hanwha’s UGV can reportedly hit speeds of 100 kilometres when fully charged, with a maximum payload capacity of 550 kilograms.
The vehicle leverages an advanced remote-controlled weapons station, built to detect/track enemy soldiers, localise the source of gunfire and fire back in the direction of the gunfire.
[Related: Hanwha delivers first tranche of K9 howitzers to Poland]
