AUSA 2025: L3Harris and Carnegie Robotics reveal Diamondback unmanned recon vehicle.

L3Harris introduced its new Diamondback autonomous reconnaissance and security vehicle at AUSA 2025, developed with Carnegie Robotics. The system is built to extend battlefield sensing while reducing risk to soldiers, marking a major step toward scalable robotic teaming in Army operations.

According to information gathered by Army Recognition on October 2025 at AUSA 2025 in Washington, L3Harris's Diamondback is a rapidly scalable, highly mobile autonomous reconnaissance and security vehicle built to push sensors forward while keeping soldiers out of first contact. The system, developed with Carnegie Robotics, leans on a modular open-systems approach and a common autonomy stack so payloads, control interfaces, and mission kits can be swapped quickly to suit tempo and terrain. The company’s AUSA materials explicitly pair Diamondback with the AMORPHOUS control architecture, signaling an intent to manage mixed teams of uncrewed systems from a single user at scale.
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L3Harris Diamondback autonomous scout with high-speed mobility, modular ISR sensors, counter-UAS, assured PNT, and resilient comms, controllable by one operator for air-ground teaming (Picture source: Army Recognition Group).

Diamondback emphasizes a triad of mobility, autonomy, and modularity. L3Harris literature describes a high-speed off-road platform designed for cross-country movement, fused with computer-vision perception, advanced RF processing, and an autonomy safety-monitoring layer for trusted operations. The MOSA design and reliance on commercial components aim to cut ownership costs and accelerate spiral upgrades, from sensors to compute. 

The payload roadmap is overtly ISR-centric. Baseline mission suites outlined by L3Harris include day and night electro-optics for target detection and tracking, RF collection for emissions mapping, UAS detect-and-defeat options for counter-drone security, and assured PNT for GNSS-degraded environments. Communications are designed for reach and resilience, combining high-capacity line-of-sight links with SATCOM beyond line of sight and a retransmission role to extend the tactical network. The system can deploy and manage small UAS swarms, and it is built to be controlled through AMORPHOUS so a single operator can coordinate heterogeneous air and ground assets from one interface.

Diamondback is tailored for screen lines, route security, point reconnaissance, and base perimeter overwatch where endurance and standoff matter. By sending a robot into first contact, commanders can preserve dismounts for decisions that require judgment while maintaining a continuous sensor picture over complex terrain. The vehicle’s mesh and retransmission roles allow it to act as a rolling node that stitches together dispersed patrols, while counter-UAS options blunt the most common threat to exposed scouts and logistics convoys. Combined with deployable quadcopters, the platform can peer over vegetation and urban defilade, build RF situational awareness, and hand off targets to crewed and uncrewed shooters without exposing soldiers to the initial ambush.

L3Harris first unveiled Diamondback at AUSA 2024 as an autonomous reconnaissance prototype and has since refined the concept into a mission-ready package aligned with Army priorities on autonomy, survivability, and contested-spectrum operations. Its presence at AUSA underscores how industry is racing to field affordable robots that complement legacy manned formations rather than replace them outright. For the Army, vehicles like Diamondback promise to thicken the reconnaissance layer, absorb risk in drone-saturated battlespaces, and create a scalable path to multi-domain teaming from one control architecture. As Ed Zoiss of L3Harris has argued, the value lies in reconfigurability, mobility, and speed to field, a formula likely to resonate as budgets favor capability that can deploy quickly and adapt over time.

L3Harris’ 2025 materials also clarify the industrial teaming picture, citing Carnegie Robotics as a core partner and reinforcing the push to leverage commercial production where possible. That approach mirrors a wider U.S. effort to harness commercial autonomy and communications tech for line-unit use. For allies watching AUSA, the signal is clear: autonomous scouts are moving from demo to duty, and Diamondback is positioned to be among the first wave.