Senator Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, criticized the Army’s decision to cancel its Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) program during a committee hearing on Wednesday. Addressing Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, Collins said he “should review this decision” and described the move as “terribly unfair and a real mistake.”
The committee convened to examine the Army’s budget request for fiscal year 2026. The RCV program had reportedly selected Textron’s Ripsaw robotic vehicle, which would have been built by Howe & Howe Technologies in Maine. Collins referred to Howe & Howe as an “innovative, brilliant firm, the kind of company that we need more of in our industrial base.”
Secretary Driscoll defended the cancellation by citing escalating costs caused by adding too many requirements to the project. He explained that such increases made it difficult for the program to remain cost-effective: “an $800 drone with a very cheap munition can take out a $3 million piece of equipment endlessly.” Driscoll added that this is not sustainable for U.S. defense spending.
Driscoll also suggested there are more affordable ways to develop autonomous vehicles. He pointed to software companies like Applied Intuition that can adapt existing drive-by-wire vehicles for autonomy quickly: “And that’s the type of cost curve we can afford, is to go out and find things that are already being purchased by consumers and translate them over to military cases,” he said. He emphasized buying “cheap, attributable, scalable solutions” rather than expensive platforms like the RCV.
Collins responded with several points in support of continuing the RCV program. She noted that Textron’s Ripsaw was showcased during the Army’s 250th birthday parade in Washington, D.C., attended by President Trump. Collins remarked on what she called irony: “It’s the height of irony that you would feature this combat vehicle in your parade as the future of the Army at the same time that you’ve canceled the contract, the cancellation of a contract that was won over a lot of other competitors.”
She further argued that counter-drone technology integrated into the RCV gives it defensive capabilities against modern threats. Finally, Collins stressed one advantage of autonomous vehicles: they reduce risk to soldiers’ lives because if an unmanned system is destroyed, no personnel are lost.
