Hanwha Aerospace has unveiled a roadmap to build a full lineup of military unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) ranging from compact models to 30-ton unmanned combat vehicles, with the goal of achieving fully autonomous mission execution without human intervention by 2035.
The South Korean defense company announced its manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) business plan at a seminar during the “2026 Unmanned Systems × Civil-Military Cooperation Expo” held at COEX in Seoul on the 26th. The key highlight is moving up the timeline for fully autonomous mission execution to 2035, five years earlier than previously planned.
Hanwha Aerospace’s multipurpose unmanned vehicle “Arion-SMET” was recently selected for the South Korean military’s multipurpose unmanned vehicle program. The company plans to use the Arion-SMET—to be deployed with Army and Marine Corps infantry units—as its entry point into the domestic military UGV market, expanding it into a platform capable of performing diverse missions.
The Arion-SMET will be designed to accommodate swappable mission-specific modules. Its applications will expand to include surveillance and reconnaissance, drone-based reconnaissance, mine detection, fire support, counter-drone systems, and loitering munitions. The vehicle has achieved a localization rate of over 98% for major components including its remote weapons station, with a payload capacity exceeding 450 kg and a top speed of 50 km/h on paved roads.
Park Byung-ho, head of Hanwha Aerospace’s LS4 Business Division, explained the rationale behind UGV mission diversification: “Due to declining manpower resources, each unit’s area of responsibility has expanded two to four times. With increasing battlefield threats such as low-cost drones, a single platform cannot adequately respond to diverse operational environments.”
The size and roles of UGVs are also diversifying. Starting with the Arion-SMET and small UGVs such as explosive ordnance disposal robots, the company plans to build out its mid- and large-size portfolio, including a 9-ton unmanned reconnaissance vehicle currently in development, the 15-ton tracked robotic combat vehicle “T-RCV,” and the 30-ton unmanned combat vehicle “H-UGV.” Next year, the company plans to conduct a domestic demonstration of its “Hanwha MUM-T Solution” integrating these unmanned systems.
The company’s ultimate goal is to move beyond individual unmanned vehicles to build a combat system where multiple manned and unmanned weapon systems operate together. After securing a common UGV platform by 2030, Hanwha Aerospace plans to evolve it into an autonomous system capable of independent perception, judgment, and decision-making, and in the long term expand into MUM-T and swarm solution businesses connecting multiple platforms.
Vision-language-action (VLA) based physical AI was identified as the core technology for fully autonomous mission execution. This approach enables robots to perceive battlefield conditions through cameras and other sensors, understand the meaning of commands, and independently determine necessary actions without step-by-step human instruction.
Park Mae-hoon, head of the Manned-Unmanned Teaming Research Center at Hanwha Aerospace’s LS Research Institute, said: “To achieve this goal, we need smooth acquisition of battlefield data using combat robots, and the establishment of hyper-connected, anti-jamming communications to overcome communication constraints. We must also build a defense physical AI alliance—a military-institution-industry-academia R&D cooperation framework.”
At the expo, Hanwha Aerospace displayed the Arion-SMET and the fourth-generation multipurpose unmanned vehicle “GRUNT” in physical form. GRUNT is a next-generation multipurpose unmanned vehicle based on the Arion-SMET. A scale model of the unmanned reconnaissance vehicle currently under development and a multi-legged robot from partner company Lion Robotics were also showcased.
Hanwha Aerospace previously conducted an integrated MUM-T performance demonstration in Romania in May. It marked the first time a South Korean-developed military unmanned vehicle demonstrated its capabilities on-site in Europe. The demonstration featured Hanwha Aerospace’s wheeled armored vehicle TIGON, UGVs, and GRUNT, alongside the THeMIS developed by Estonia’s Milrem Robotics. GRUNT and THeMIS were deployed ahead into hazardous areas to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance missions linked with drones, while the TIGON armored vehicle handled troop transport and fire support.