GM Defense showed up to the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. with a Chevy Silverado 3500 HD that doesn’t need anyone behind the wheel.
The Unmanned Ground Vehicle concept uses the skateboard architecture of the dual-rear-wheel Silverado 3500 HD, and GM Defense wants it hauling supplies and performing casualty evacuation with no driver aboard. Functional testing is targeted for 2027. The pitch is familiar corporate logic dressed in fatigues: use what GM already builds rather than reinventing it.
“We do not begin with a blank sheet of paper,” said GM Defense president Steve duMont. “By transferring GM’s world-class engineering, supply chain and manufacturing scale directly to the service member, we are transforming customer needs into mission-ready capability faster than ever before.”
Alongside the driverless pickup, GM Defense wheeled out the EPIQ Hybrid prototype, which marries a generator onboard to a 60-kilowatt, 100-kilowatt-hour expeditionary energy storage system. The point is electricity in rough operational environments with reduced thermal and acoustic signatures — GM’s commercial technology, now aimed at keeping a forward operating base quiet and dark.
The headline-grabber on the balance sheet is the Infantry Squad Vehicle. The Army has expanded its order to 12,000 units, up from an initial 649. That is the kind of multiple most civilian GM product planners can only dream about. The ISV is now slated for deployment across 39 mobile brigades, covering both active-duty Army units and the National Guard.
GM Defense also says it self-funded development of the Infantry Squad Vehicle Utility (ISV-U) prototype after identifying “a clear operational gap” from customer feedback.
Rounding out the AUSA showing, GM Defense flagged its delivery of PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement components to Lockheed Martin, plus the continued expansion of GM Defence UK, including its Light Mobility Vehicle proposal.
Whether a robotic Silverado makes it past the 2027 testing stage is another question. For now, GM has found a customer that keeps multiplying its orders.
[Images: GM Defense]
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