Oshkosh Defense unveiled its Medium Multi-Mission Autonomous Vehicle, or M-MAV, at AUSA 2025 in Washington, D.C., showcasing an optionally manned launcher based on the proven FMTV A2 medium truck. The concept allows the Army to deploy MLRS munitions from autonomous launchers, reducing crew risk while expanding survivability and dispersed firepower.
At AUSA 2025 in Washington, D.C., Oshkosh Defense introduced the Medium Multi-Mission Autonomous Vehicle (M-MAV), an optionally manned launcher derived from the production Oshkosh FMTV A2 and designed to employ the MLRS Family of Munitions (MFOM). Purpose-built for optionally manned or fully autonomous launcher operations, the production-based platform integrates advanced navigation, remote operation, and automated resupply to reduce crew burden, increase survivability, and enable dispersed, resilient fires formations. By pairing the FMTV A2 medium truck base with scalable autonomy, the M-MAV offers a ready, logistics-compatible path to turn familiar MLRS effects into an optionally manned, networked fires node without relying on a clean-sheet vehicle.
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Oshkosh’s AUSA 2025 reveal signals a clear message for land-based precision firepower: autonomy is moving from demonstration to deployment on platforms the Army already knows how to buy, sustain, and train (Picture source: Army Recognition Group)
The Oshkosh M-MAV launcher is derived from the Oshkosh FMTV A2 and is purpose-built for optionally manned or fully autonomous launcher operations. It integrates advanced navigation, remote operation, and automated resupply to disperse firing units, shorten launch-and-scoot timelines, and complicate adversary targeting. Compatibility with the MLRS Family of Munitions (MFOM) gives commanders a single chassis that can service targets across tactical to deep-strike envelopes, while the common truck heritage eases sustainment and training. Software-defined autonomy allows the Army to scale from driver-assist to fully unmanned missions as doctrine and policy mature.
From a development perspective, the M-MAV emerges from Oshkosh’s long production run of FMTV A2 trucks and the Army’s push to migrate existing combat support fleets toward scalable autonomy. Rather than debuting as a one-off demonstrator, the launcher is presented as a production-based adaptation of a fielded vehicle family, enabling rapid soldier touch-points, iterative software upgrades, and early unit-level experimentation. Introduced at AUSA 2025, the platform’s path reflects a build-on-what-exists approach: retain the known reliability of the FMTV A2 while integrating autonomy kits, remote fire-control, and automated resupply workflows to validate tactics and training on a familiar backbone.
The M-MAV’s key advantages concentrate in three areas: survivability, flexibility, and force design. Survivability improves because an optionally manned or fully autonomous launcher can disperse away from command posts and logistics nodes, execute remote fire missions, and reposition faster after launch, narrowing the adversary sensor-to-shooter window. Flexibility stems from MFOM compatibility, letting units tailor loadouts from area effects to deep-strike missiles without changing platforms. Force design benefits as commanders can field more launch cells across a wider frontage, using autonomy to reduce crew burden and reassign soldiers to higher-value tasks. Compared with today’s manned M142 HIMARS and tracked M270, the M-MAV targets the same effects chain but shifts the risk calculus: where HIMARS emphasizes mobility with a crewed wheeled launcher and M270 emphasizes protected volume fire on tracks, the M-MAV emphasizes dispersion and autonomous employment on a common truck chassis. Against other emerging unmanned launch concepts, its differentiator is production pragmatism, firean autonomy-ready platform built from a mass-produced Army truck with established support channels, which can shorten fielding timelines and life-cycle costs.
Strategically, an autonomous MLRS launcher alters deterrence and escalation dynamics by increasing the number of credible fires nodes that adversaries must locate and suppress, raising the bar for counter-battery and long-range strike campaigns. Geopolitically, the concept supports allied interoperability because MLRS Family of Munitions are widely exported among U.S. partners; a launcher that remains logistics-compatible with FMTV-based fleets could be adopted or co-produced with fewer integration hurdles. Geostrategically, autonomy enables sustained dispersed operations across large theaters where road mobility and deception matter, whether Indo-Pacific archipelagos, Eastern European depth, or Middle Eastern deserts, while complicating any adversary’s reconnaissance-strike complex. Militarily, the M-MAV supports the Army’s shift toward resilient kill chains: launchers operate as low-signature, distributed nodes cued by joint sensors, executing fast salvos and then handing off to automated resupply cycles that keep the fires web active under electronic and kinetic pressure.
Oshkosh’s AUSA 2025 reveal signals a clear message for land-based precision firepower: autonomy is moving from demonstration to deployment on platforms the Army already knows how to buy, sustain, and train. By pairing a proven FMTV A2 chassis with an autonomy-ready launcher equipped for the MLRS Family of Munitions, the M-MAV aims to expand the number of survivable launch cells in the field, redistribute human crews to where they are most needed, and give commanders a practical path to dispersed, resilient long-range fires in a contested electromagnetic and kinetic environment.
Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.