IN Brief:
- Sandhills 2.0 is testing autonomous breaching and terrain-shaping systems on Ford F-250 vehicles.
- Two vehicles have been identified with 9 Mothers kinetic counter-UAS systems alongside Forterra’s AutoDrive.
- August testing combined aerial systems, semi-autonomous vehicles, and counter-UAS protection under unified command and control.
Forterra has taken its Ford F-250-based autonomous mission systems into the US Army’s latest Sandhills 2.0 testing at Fort Bragg, where semi-autonomous vehicles, aerial systems, breaching technology, and counter-UAS protection are being integrated under a common command-and-control architecture.
Official imagery from the 18 August event shows Sandhills personnel conducting testing at Range 63 and describes the programme as combining aerial systems, semi-autonomous vehicles, and counter-unmanned-aircraft defences. The material was posted on 21 August, providing a fresh test milestone for a programme whose architecture had been outlined publicly earlier in the summer.
Forterra secured the second Sandhills prime contract at the end of July to supply autonomous mission systems based on Ford F-250 vehicles. The company says the vehicles are intended to support autonomous breaching and terrain-shaping activity, including zone clearance and line-charge deployment, while integrating technologies from other suppliers for threat identification, breaching, counter-mobility, and counter-UAS tasks.
The distinction between programme architecture and the August test matters. Counter-UAS protection was already planned before the latest activity, so the fresh development is the continued integration and testing of those functions rather than the first appearance of the idea.
Earlier programme details identify four Ford F-250s equipped with Forterra’s AutoDrive software and data architecture, with two vehicles carrying kinetic counter-UAS equipment from 9 Mothers. The Edda system is a remote turret using a shotgun-based effector for close-range engagements against small drones, supported by sensing equipment.
That arrangement addresses a vulnerability created by the breaching mission itself. An uncrewed ground vehicle operating around obstacles, line charges, or engineering tasks may have limited freedom to manoeuvre, making it susceptible to small aerial systems while it is stationary or moving predictably through a constrained route.
Integrating protection onto the vehicle is not simply a matter of fitting a turret. The autonomy stack has to control movement, obstacle avoidance, route execution, and mission behaviour, while the counter-UAS system performs sensing, tracking, and weapon functions. Command-and-control software must present those processes to human operators without allowing one subsystem to create unsafe behaviour in another.
The use of an F-250 chassis brings both advantages and constraints. A commercial vehicle offers an existing supply base and mature automotive hardware, potentially simplifying maintenance and replacement compared with a bespoke prototype carrier. Once autonomy equipment, sensors, communications, breaching payloads, weapons, power conversion, and protective systems are added, however, payload, electrical demand, cooling, vibration, and structural integration all become programme-level concerns.
That is why Sandhills 2.0 is better viewed as a systems-integration exercise than a self-driving-vehicle demonstration. Autonomous mobility is one element of a broader mission architecture in which the vehicle has to reach a task area, operate engineering equipment, respond to threats, communicate with other systems, and remain controllable by soldiers.
The August activity also involved aerial systems, indicating that the Army is testing a wider network rather than concentrating exclusively on the ground vehicle. Official material describes the event as bringing those systems together under unified command and control, making software interfaces and data exchange part of the technical evaluation.
Such integration can expose faults that do not appear during component testing. Communications links can interfere with one another, sensors may generate competing tracks, power demand can peak unexpectedly, and software may respond differently when several mission functions are active at once. Testing combined configurations is therefore necessary before an autonomous platform can be treated as a fieldable system rather than a collection of individually successful products.
The programme does not yet establish that the F-250 configuration is ready for operational deployment. Sustained reliability, degraded communications, cyber resilience, maintenance, environmental performance, weapon safety, navigation loss, and recovery from autonomy faults all remain important parts of the route from demonstration to routine military use.
There is also a configuration problem as Sandhills evolves. Commercial technology can be updated quickly, which is one reason the Army is attracted to it, but rapid change creates pressure on interface control, software baselines, training, spares, and safety evidence. An autonomy update that works in one vehicle configuration cannot simply be assumed to behave identically after a new sensor or weapon is added.
The current testing is valuable precisely because it brings those complications together while the architecture is still being shaped. Sandhills 2.0 is moving beyond proving that an F-250 can drive without a crew and towards the more difficult question of whether autonomous mobility, engineering effects, aerial systems, and self-protection can operate as one dependable mission system.
