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May 9, 2026 — General Motors is taking a notable step beyond civilian autonomy: a driverless Chevrolet Silverado built for the U.S. military. GM Defense, the automaker’s defense unit, unveiled an unmanned ground vehicle based on the Silverado 3500HD at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual exposition in 2025. The vehicle is being developed for logistics and medical evacuation, with GM Defense planning to begin functional trials in 2027.
Since that reveal, the company hasn’t announced any additional scheduled milestones for the UGV. That makes the 2027 trial date the clearest public marker for the program. In the meantime, GM Defense is using its existing military truck contracts to keep the larger expeditionary-vehicle business moving.
The design starts with a familiar face. The front grille, headlights, and hood are unmistakably Silverado, but everything behind the front axle is different. The cab is gone. There is no room for a driver, no windshield, no steering wheel. What remains is essentially an engine and an open flatbed above heavy-duty dual rear wheels. The result looks like a civilian 3500HD work truck that has been stripped for a supporting role.
GM calls the package a dual-rear-wheel skateboard architecture. The skateboard label implies a flat, low-profile arrangement that can be adapted to different payloads without altering the core chassis. The dual rear wheels add the stability needed for heavy loads, particularly when a mission module sits near the rear edge of the frame. The company also says the architecture supports “silent movement,” a quality that makes the vehicle harder to detect during night operations or resupply runs in contested zones.
What that silent mode actually looks like is still not clear. The UGV retains an internal-combustion engine, and GM Defense has not detailed whether it uses a hybrid-electric drive, a secondary electric motor, or an engine management strategy that cuts noise output. That is one detail the Army is likely to scrutinize before trials start.
The intended mission scope is deliberately narrow. This isn’t a combat machine; it’s a support truck. GM Defense is targeting logistics runs — moving food, water, fuel, ammunition, and replacement parts between supply points — and evacuations, where the flatbed can be fitted to carry wounded personnel instead of cargo. Both roles today put soldiers inside vehicles that are among the most vulnerable targets in a combat zone.
The flatbed is more than a simple cargo box. Because the cab is gone, the space behind the front axle becomes a flexible mission deck. In a logistics configuration, it can carry palletized supplies. In an evacuation role, it can hold multiple litters. That kind of modularity is what military planners look for in a support vehicle that may have to switch roles between deployments.
To drive itself, the Silverado UGV uses drive-by-wire technology. Mechanical steering, throttle, and brake connections are replaced by electronic controls, which allow the autonomy system to operate the truck. GM Defense has paired that foundation with Scout AI’s Gx Ground Agent autonomy stack, according to a report from Motor1. The Gx system is an autonomy stack for ground vehicles, built around the kind of perception and planning tasks that would normally fall to a human driver. GM Defense has not released details on the UGV’s sensor package, processing hardware, or communications gear — details that will matter, especially for missions that run at night or in GPS-contested areas.
The broader logic behind the program is straightforward: the Pentagon has made it a priority to remove soldiers from high-risk logistics duty. Autonomous resupply trucks don’t storm objectives or engage enemies, but they make the support side of warfare considerably safer. A driverless vehicle that carries ammunition into a frontline position doesn’t need to worry about getting shot on the return trip.
GM Defense’s history makes it a natural candidate for that work. The company’s roots go back to World War I, when General Motors produced trucks and artillery for the U.S. military. GM sold its defense division in 2003, then re-established GM Defense in 2017 to compete for modern military programs. The current lineup builds on decades of automotive engineering rather than starting from scratch.
The Silverado UGV isn’t the only Chevrolet wearing combat gear under the new GM Defense. In 2021, GM won the Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle program with a platform derived from the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2. The original buy was set at 649 vehicles, but the requirement has grown to nearly 12,000 as the Army increased its order. GM Defense has also created a five-passenger ISV variant, and the company expects to field it across 39 brigades in the near future.
The next step in the truck family is a heavier ISV-Heavy model, reportedly based on the Silverado. GM Defense is still in the prototype phase with that vehicle, and the next milestone is testing with the U.S. Army. If that variant advances, it would further cement the Silverado as a platform for both manned and unmanned roles.
GM Defense’s overall approach is easy to recognize: take a commercial Chevrolet truck, keep the mass-produced parts wherever possible, and build the military-specific bits around them. That strategy can lower procurement costs and simplify maintenance because mechanics and suppliers already know the base truck. The driverless Silverado applies the same logic to autonomy — the structural core is familiar, while the electronic brain is added on.
Military vehicle programs have a reputation for high development costs. By basing the UGV on the Silverado 3500HD, GM Defense is betting that a robot built from a commercial truck can avoid the sticker shock that comes with many purpose-built unmanned ground vehicles. Commercial parts also mean a spare-parts pipeline that already exists across the civilian market.
That doesn’t mean the UGV will be easy to bring through development. Autonomous trucks still struggle with degraded sensor conditions, whether that means battlefield dust, heavy rain, or electronic jamming. Off-road route planning is also more complex than highway driving, and a military environment adds obstacles that no mapping dataset can fully predict. The 2027 functional trials are meant to show whether GM Defense’s combination of commercial hardware and defense-grade software can clear that bar.
Autonomous military logistics has become a crowded field, with several defense contractors and commercial self-driving companies chasing the same pool of military funding. GM Defense’s differentiator is the Silverado itself. Using a truck that is already mass-produced gives the company an existing supply chain and service network that a bespoke robotic vehicle would have to build from scratch.
For now, the driverless Silverado remains the most ambitious project in GM Defense’s portfolio. It is also the least mature. The company’s existing Colorado-based ISV is already deep into production and expansion. The Silverado-based ISV-Heavy is one step behind in development. The UGV trails them both, but it offers a direct look at where GM Defense wants to go: autonomous support vehicles built on trucks that American soldiers — and American buyers — already know.
