Unmanned - Assault Amphibious Vehicle (U-AAV)

The U-AAV is being developed by ONR and Naval Surface Warfare Centers - Panama City and Indian Head and seeks to create an unmanned amphibious breaching platform to execute one of the most material and manpowerintensive tasks associated with littoral combat.  In essence, autonomous technology is being incorporated onto an AAV platform that also contains a MK-154 line charge kit for explosive breaching, a mine plow for lane proofing, a lane marking system to identify and mark proofed lanes, and a remote demining vehicle to further substitute the mine plow.  All incorporated, this system desires to achieve fully autonomous breaching.  While it has been many years since an amphibious breach under duress has been called for, this is undoubtedly a Service-defining capability and allows the Marine Corps to penetrate a hostile shoreline should no adversarial gaps be located.  A similar system, although manned, is currently fielded within assault amphibian units and is utilized by the engineering community.  With murkiness revolving around the future of the Assault Breacher Vehicle platform, the U-AAV may very well become the Service’s sole explosive breach capable armored platform.  Such a capable, unmanned vehicle may be highly sought after in the future; the reoptimization of a legacy platform such as the AAV is a sound use for just this task.

Marine Corps Gazette • August 2020
by Maj Justin D. Davis

A remotely operated unmanned Marine Corps AAV is taking California beaches