Task Force RAPSTONE
British Army fast-track procurement mechanism for uncrewed ground vehicles; awarded ARX the GEREON contract.
Last refreshed: 13 June 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
How did the British Army give a German robot maker a UK factory contract in under a year?
Timeline for Task Force RAPSTONE
Awarded the GEREON contract to ARX Robotics UK in April 2026
Autonomous Systems: Land & Sea: ARX builds British Army robot line- What is Task Force RAPSTONE in the British Army?
- Task Force RAPSTONE is the British Army's fast-track procurement mechanism for uncrewed ground vehicles, designed to compress the time from requirement to contract by limiting programme scope. It awarded ARX Robotics the first GEREON UGV contract in April 2026.Source: ARX Robotics / GOV.UK
- What contract did Task Force RAPSTONE award to ARX Robotics?
- Task Force RAPSTONE awarded ARX Robotics UK its first GEREON UGV contract on 16 April 2026, supporting a £45m UK manufacturing investment with capacity for up to 1,800 robots per year and at least 90 skilled jobs, with Supacat as production partner.Source: ARX Robotics / GOV.UK
- How does the British Army fast-track robot procurement work?
- Task Force RAPSTONE constrains programme scope and bypasses extended staff-work phases to accelerate uncrewed ground vehicle procurement. It accepts in-country final assembly by foreign firms such as ARX Robotics (Germany) working with UK partners such as Supacat.Source: ARX Robotics / GOV.UK
Background
Task Force RAPSTONE awarded ARX Robotics UK the British Army's first GEREON uncrewed ground vehicle contract in April 2026, the mechanism's most publicly prominent award to date. The contract authorises ARX to invest £45m in a UK production line with capacity for up to 1,800 units per year, with Supacat as manufacturing partner and at least 90 skilled jobs created. Minister Luke Pollard described ARX's UK manufacturing investment as exactly the kind of commitment the government sought.
Task Force RAPSTONE sits within the British Army's acquisition organisation as a fast-procurement route specifically scoped for uncrewed ground vehicles. It is designed to compress the timeline from requirement to contract by constraining programme scope and bypassing the extended staff-work phases that produced the Ajax armoured vehicle's decade-long remediation saga. The GEREON award was made for GEREON UGVs configured for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance payloads in support of Recce-Strike experimentation.
The RAPSTONE mechanism is attracting European SMEs as well as British primes by offering a route into British Army procurement that does not require UK company registration as a precondition. ARX, a German firm, won the award via in-country assembly through Supacat, a pattern European governments are increasingly mandating: procurement volume driving domestic industrial footprint rather than nationality of the prime contractor.
