NORTH DAKOTA — The GroundBreaker 1 demonstration is scheduled for mid-October at Camp Grafton. A notice regarding the demonstration was published on a government contracting website on August 21.

Officials are currently accepting white papers from vendors for the demonstration. Only members of the DoW Drone OTA Consortium are eligible to participate in the demonstration. "DoW" is an abbreviation for Department of War, which the Trump administration uses as the preferred name for the Department of Defense.

The upcoming demo is part of an effort to add UGV offerings to the Pentagon’s Drone Marketplace. The Pentagon’s Drone Marketplace recently went live. The online marketplace includes portals for unmanned aerial systems, uncrewed surface vessels and underwater vehicles, UGVs, and counter-drone platforms. On Monday morning, efforts to access the UGV section of the digital platform resulted in a message saying it was "currently under development."

For the October demo, officials are seeking platforms that can execute in at least one core mission area. Core mission areas include reconnaissance and surveillance; transport of supplies and equipment; explosive ordnance disposal and route clearance; search and rescue; force protection and perimeter security; casualty evacuation; or Other Support/Multi-Domain Operations. Desired capabilities include autonomous obstacle avoidance, all-terrain mobility, and open-system, hardware-agnostic software architectures that seamlessly integrate with the military’s networks and command-and-control systems.

Platforms tested at Camp Grafton for GroundBreaker 1 will be operated in realistic field conditions. Service members will operate the platforms and provide feedback about their usability and overall mission effectiveness, per the notice. Vendors whose systems demonstrate "high tactical value and technical maturity" during the demo may be tapped to submit a full technical and cost proposal in pursuit of an OTA award for prototyping, according to the notice.

Why It Matters

U.S. military officials want to adopt UGV technology to keep troops out of harm’s way. Historically, the Pentagon has faced more difficulty bringing UGVs into its fleet than it has fielding unmanned aerial systems or maritime drones. The difficulty in fielding UGVs is partly due to the unique challenges associated with operating robotic systems in the ground domain where rough terrain must be traversed and there are many types of obstacles to avoid. UGVs have proven their utility in the Russia-Ukraine war, where both sides have employed them for a variety of missions.

Timeline

In May 2025, the Department of Defense released a notice stating that the organization facilitates the rapid solicitation, evaluation, and award of other transaction agreements (OTAs) for prototyping and production that address the military’s specific areas of interest and statements of need.

What's New

The Department of Defense is planning to conduct a demonstration of industry-built robotic vehicles in North Dakota this fall. The Joint Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) demonstration is named GroundBreaker 1.