WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps awarded Oshkosh Defense $39.6 million to begin production of its ROGUE Fires unmanned missile launcher, following the delivery of six prototypes earlier this year.

The Sept. 27 award for the Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary Fires system would allow Oshkosh to begin low-rate initial production of this unmanned ground vehicle that’s based on the design of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

The award does not have a number of vehicles associated with it, but Oshkosh program manager Chuck Bunton told Defense News at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference that the contract would allow the business to establish low-rate initial production alongside the existing JLTV assembly line.

The ROGUE Fires design essentially removes the cab of the JLTV, replaces the manned controls with an autonomy package, and tacks on the missile launchers that can be remotely fired. The Marine Corps has paired the ROGUE Fires with the Naval Strike Missile to create the Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or NMESIS — though Bunton said ROGUE Fires is “payload agnostic” and could launch several lethal options.

The Corps has talked about eventually using a longer-range anti-ship missile as it seeks to support the Navy by conducting sea-control and sea-denial missions in the Pacific from islands and shorelines.

A Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System launcher deploys into position aboard Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands, Hawaii, on Aug. 16, 2021. The system and its Naval Strike Missiles participated in a live-fire drill as part of Large Scale Exercise 2021. (Maj. Nick Mannweiler/U.S. Marine Corps)

The NMESIS system was first demonstrated in 2021, when Marines used it to help sink a decommissioned Navy ship during Large Scale Exercise 2021.

Then-Lt. Gen. Eric Smith, who now is the commandant of the Marine Corps and in 2021 was deputy commandant for combat development and integration, said that “a peer adversary has to respect a Naval Strike Missile that for $1.7 million can damage a warship of almost $2 billion — and you can’t find it” because the ROGUE Fires launching system is so small and can move immediately after firing on its target.

Bunton said Oshkosh and the Marine Corps have privately conducted a number of evaluations and demonstrations of the system between the 2021 launch and a second publicly announced one in June 2023. The Oshkosh team has focused on incorporating user feedback from Marines operating the system.

“Since the very beginning of the program to today, there’s been constant iterations and developments to provide the Marine Corps the mature platform that you see today on contract for [low-rate initial production],” Bunton said.

Smith and other Marine Corps leaders have pointed to NMESIS as one example of a Force Design 2030 modernization effort that’s going well and should be accelerated. In this case, they say prototypes proved themselves in the field but that they want to get production units out to deployed Marines as quick as industry can manage.

Smith said at the 2023 Defense News Conference that NMESIS development was “done. Now we just need to procure the ROGUE systems.”

Asked what Oshkosh is eyeing as a next step, with the low-rate initial production contract awarded, Bunton simply said: “Production.”

Megan Eckstein is the naval warfare reporter at Defense News. She has covered military news since 2009, with a focus on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition programs and budgets. She has reported from four geographic fleets and is happiest when she’s filing stories from a ship. Megan is a University of Maryland alumna.

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