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The Shawn Ryan Show · 3 min · Sep 3, 2026
Field exercises expanded the vehicles beyond resupply
The 82nd Airborne started with logistics, then added cameras and drones and used the vehicles for reconnaissance and decoys in training.
In this episode
Full analysis- 50:15DARPA breakthroughs need a company to reach warfighters8 min
- 1:38:24Autonomy keeps vehicles moving when communications fail4 min
- 1:46:10Autonomous breaching can keep dozens of troops out of danger3 min
- 58:39Overland built vehicles when software alone could not reach troops6 min
- 1:35:11Field exercises expanded the vehicles beyond resupply3 min
- 32:08Autonomy needs training data from varied terrain4 min
- 1:27:38Ground robots will augment human formations before replacing them6 min
- 2:05:01Ukraine adopts battlefield technology faster because the stakes are existential3 min
“And by the end of this, they were using these autonomous vehicles in this force-on-force exercise, not just for resupply, but also for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.”
Takeaways
- Overland worked with more than 20 units.
- The 82nd Airborne began with resupply and added payloads.
- Force-on-force training expanded use to reconnaissance and decoys.
About this segment
The 82nd Airborne started with logistics, then added cameras and drones and used the vehicles for reconnaissance and decoys in training. Byron Boots says field use helped units develop new roles.
Byron Boots is cofounder and CEO of Overland AI; professor at the University of Washington.
Shawn Ryan, Host · Host, The Shawn Ryan Show
From “Byron Boots - 5 People Could Control an Army of 500 Autonomous Vehicles | SRS #336”, Sep 3, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 1:35:14
You know, you can have convoys of autonomous vehicles that don't have people on them, right, that can move very quickly and move supplies back and forth. Even if they're targeted, at least no human is being killed. You can have them, autonomous vehicles, out in front of human convoys as well, right? So really making sure that there is no one out there that, you know, moving first through the terrain.
- 1:35:40
So generally speaking, there's a lot of ideas in Army and Marine Corps about how to use these vehicles out in front. Again, like leading convoys or as like a protective onion almost, right? You can think about a whole set of vehicles that are surrounding higher value assets, whether they're. People or, you know, tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles or, you know, XM-30, which is the replacement for that, having autonomous vehicles that can provide sensing and protection for those formations.
- 1:36:14
So we think about them as adding to some of the things that we're developing. How many of these scenarios have you kind of wargamed or run scenarios on out at wherever? Quite a few. I mean, I think people are, once they start to see the vehicle and they start to think about it, they are coming up with lots of ways of potentially using them. And as we, you know, one of the things we've been trying to do in the last year is work with a lot of different units. So we've worked with over 20 different units integrating this technology into the unit.
- 1:36:48
For example, the 82nd Airborne, we worked with 382 for almost six months, just embedded with them up through one of their training rotations down at JRTC in Louisiana. And we started out just doing resupply. They were like, this is kind of the obvious use case for this. Let's use this to support our logistics, to allow us to move faster. And we were able to do that. And so then they were like, okay, like, can we get cameras and drones and things like that?
- 1:37:18
on it, the answer is yes. And so we started to add different types of payloads to it. They started to use them in more creative ways. And by the end of this, they were using these autonomous vehicles in this force-on-force exercise, not just for resupply, but also for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. There were snipers who were using the vehicles as decoys. There's just a lot of things you can start to do.
- 1:37:47
and the first step is really just, like, getting it in the hands of the warfighter, right? Like, let them think about the problems they're trying to solve, experience the technology, and then, you know, start to iterate on, you know, potentially new tactics and things like this that you can do with the vehicles. Now, are these truly autonomous, or is there somebody,