GS Engineering’s REAPr unmanned ground vehicle designed for US Marines

GVSETS 2025 — Michigan-based vehicle-maker GS Engineering this week is using the GVSETS Conference here to promote what one company official called a “small, cost-effective” ground vehicle platform designed for use by the US Marines.

The Remote Expeditionary Autonomous Pioneer System or REAPr was developed as part of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project. It’s meant to be rapidly deployable from a V-22 tiltrotor aircraft and be highly customizable.

“The Marine Corps wanted basically anything that could be a modular payload on a robot. They wanted a laundry list of capabilities: be able to fight fires, dig ditches, conduct area denial missions, lift and handle pallets,” GS Engineering Director of Business Development and Marketing Traci Webb told Breaking Defense.

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Webb said the Marines intend to deploy this capability in dangerous, risky missions instead of sending troops. For that matter, path and trail clearance, as well as explosive hazard defeat, are other user cases.

At GVSETS, GS Engineering showcased the platform fitted with an attachment called the Ultralight Tactical Bridge, a literal bridge meant to be placed over gaps in the terrain. It’s a capability the company argues generally isn’t available with “ultralight combat vehicles due to the severe mismatch of size, weight, speed and transportability” with traditional bridging equipment.

The company was selected for Phase I of the SBIR REAPr in 2022 and for the second stage of the project in 2023.

Webb said the goal of the initial step was to demonstrate the feasibility of the USMC concepts through simulation and modeling while engineering a virtual prototype. This approach involved the use of Unreal Engine to rapidly develop the UGV.

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Webb stressed that, during this stage, the company also carried out “an intensive stakeholder engagement activity with the Marines to really understand the context of their problem and requirement set.”

This effort is currently in the second stage. In this phase, the supplier has been advancing the platform design and building the vehicle’s prototype.

“The entire program for us is moving very fast. Right now, we are midway through our Phase II SBIR contract and are developing and implementing different capabilities. But we are a year ahead of our intended development and prototype schedule,” Webb said.

GS Engineering is also involved in other ground system projects across the DoD through partnerships with defense prime contractors. For example, it has supported the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) and Family of Medium Truck Vehicles (FMTV) and is working on the XM30.