Rheinmetall Canada’s unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) successfully made its way to a Portuguese beach after being dropped in the Atlantic Ocean as part of a military exercise attended by NATO allies.
The robot, called Mission Master 2.0, was loaded with kit from several partners, including a tethered drone from France’s Elistair, a radar from US firm Echodyne, and Rheinmetall’s own mast and sensors, when it completed its first overseas sea-to-shore swim.
The achievement signals a potential shift for the ground-based platform, hinting at future roles in naval operations beyond its original land combat mission.
“[Mission Master 2.0] was embarked on a warship that navigated into challenging waters and was dropped into the sea, with a crane, and its mission was to effectively navigate back to the beach near the testing site,” Rheinmetall Canada’s Director of International Business Development Étienne Rancourt told Defense News.
The UGV was deployed to Portugal for NATO’s Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping using Unmanned Systems (REPMUS) exercise, held throughout September.
The event brought together 24 countries and tested more than 276 unmanned systems for operations at sea.
The Mission Master Family
Rheinmetall’s Mission Master product line is a collection of autonomous UGVs designed to support troops in combat across any weather and domain.
The vehicles can take on a wide range battlefield roles, from surveillance and fire support to casualty evacuation, logistics, and communications relay.
Variants include a low-profile model that shadows soldiers, a hybrid-powered version with compact storage, and a heavy-duty design for transporting payloads across extreme terrain.
All Mission Master systems are equipped with Rheinmetall’s Path autonomous kit (A-kit), which enables modes such as follow, convoy, and fully autonomous operation — freeing up soldiers for high-priority tasks.
“Rheinmetall is committed to keeping a human in the loop in all kinetic operations, assuring that it is never a machine that decides when to open fire,” Rheinmetall stated on its website.
“The Path A-kit has an open, flexible architecture, meaning it will rapidly integrate first-hand innovations as artificial intelligence technologies evolve.”
