Liminal's mass-producible UGV heads to Pentagon trial

Liminal Industries, a U.S. startup building unmanned ground vehicles meant to be produced and fielded in large numbers, has advanced to the second phase of the GroundBreaker 1 competition and will demonstrate its DUEL-V vehicle to U.S. military evaluators in North Dakota next month.

The company announced Sept. 28 that its Phase I submission passed technical evaluation and that it will bring multiple DUEL-V vehicles to Camp Grafton in mid-October. An unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, is a vehicle that operates on land with no crew aboard, driven by a remote operator or by its own software.

DUEL-V, short for Dynamic Unmanned Expendable Light Vehicle, is a compact, remotely operated platform that Liminal designed around three priorities: low cost, adaptability and the ability to build it at scale. It uses a modular layout that accepts different mission payloads, runs on four-wheel drive and can operate in either orientation. The company has not released its size, weight, speed, range, payload capacity or price.

“Scale has been a design requirement from the beginning,” said Bradley Balzer, founder and CEO of Liminal Industries. “Cost, manufacturing, and operator usability determine whether a ground system can become a widely deployed capability. GroundBreaker gives us an opportunity to demonstrate that approach and put DUEL-V in front of the people who will shape its deployment at scale.”

Liminal says its development relies on field testing, feedback from operators and rapid hardware changes between versions. It first unveiled DUEL-V on Oct. 14, 2025, when Balzer pitched it as the ground equivalent of an FPV drone, the cheap first-person-view quadcopters that armies in Ukraine now use by the hundreds of thousands. At the time, the company did not disclose payload options, how much the vehicle can drive itself or whether it can keep working under electronic jamming, and it has not released those details since.

GroundBreaker 1 is a joint Department of War demonstration meant to speed up the military’s adoption of unmanned ground vehicles. U.S. Army Contracting Command issued the call for white papers on Aug. 21 through the Department of War Drone OTA Consortium, which limited the competition to companies already enrolled in that consortium. Government teams from the Office of the Secretary of War and the military services are supporting the event.

The U.S. Army is looking for complete systems that troops can use in both combat and non-combat settings. The solicitation lists missions including reconnaissance and surveillance, tactical logistics, explosive ordnance disposal and route clearance, search and rescue, and force protection. White papers were scored out of 100 points: 40% for technical merit and design, 35% for readiness to deliver and demonstrate, 15% for cost and affordability, and 10% for past performance. The recommended threshold to reach Phase II was 75 points.

At Camp Grafton, service members will operate the vehicles in realistic field conditions and give feedback on how easy they are to use and how well they perform their missions. Companies will also make live pitches to government evaluators. Vendors whose vehicles show “high tactical value and technical maturity” may then be invited to submit a full technical and cost proposal for a prototype Other Transaction Agreement, a contract type the Pentagon uses to buy and test new technology faster than through traditional procurement.

GroundBreaker follows the demonstration-first model of the Department of War’s Drone Dominance Program, which runs aerial drones through competitive “Gauntlet” trials before placing large orders. The department has not said how many UGVs it plans to buy after GroundBreaker 1 or how many companies will take part in the October event.

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