US Army Tests Self-Driving Ford F-250 With Drone-Killing Shotgun Turret

by Aaron Leong — Monday, August 24, 2026, 11:53 AM EDT

Ford F-250 platform from the Army's Sandhills 2.0 program - Image: Forterra

Last week, the U.S. Army tested a self-driving Ford F-250 equipped with a shotgun-toting, drone-destroying turret during a live-fire exercise at Fort Bragg, bringing close-range defense to heavy engineering missions.

The vehicle is part of Project Sandhills 2.0, an Army program used to develop self-driving platforms that navigate hazardous combat zones to breach obstacles, clear landmines, and slice through wire entanglements ahead of advancing troops. While early iterations focused on earth-moving and route clearance, modern combat lessons noted an immediate vulnerability to lethal FPV attack quadcopters. Therefore, by mounting an automated defense system to a commercial heavy-duty truck, engineers created a self-protecting machine that is truly built Ford tough.

Central to the Ford demonstrator is Forterra’s AutoDrive system, which transforms standard commercial F-250s into fully autonomous vehicles capable of navigation, perception, and obstacle clearance. Relying on readily available commercial components makes the chassis significantly easier and cheaper to maintain or repair in the field compared to custom-built military armor.

The truck is equipped with a Edda turret from 9 Mothers - Image: 9 Mothers

To protect the truck from airborne threats, the vehicle carries the Edda counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) turret, developed by Austin-based startup 9 Mothers. Weighing just 50 pounds (23 kilograms), the ultra-light weapon station mounts directly to the vehicle and can engage fast-moving target drones measuring 7 inches or larger in diameter and at close range (since the C-UAS is shotgun-based) at distances between 33 to 328 feet (10 and 100 meters).

The U.S. Army tested a semi-autonomous Ford F-250 equipped with the Edda counter-drone turret during Project Sandhills 2.0 at Fort Bragg on August 18.

The vehicle combines Forterra’s AutoDrive autonomy system with the Edda turret from 9 Mothers. The system is intended to… pic.twitter.com/zdFBWLCno0
— Drone Wars (@Drone_Wars_) August 23, 2026

Notably, instead of constantly broadcasting radar signals that reveal its position to enemy sensors, the Edda turret uses acoustic detection to track incoming quadcopters. Once an acoustic signal is detected, the system passes the target coordinates to an onboard optical tracking system to lock on. The high-speed motion platform can shift 5 degrees in under 15 milliseconds at 1.5 arcminute precision, allowing its automated shotgun to blast incoming kamikaze drones out of the sky before reach the truck or other targets. At Fort Bragg, Edda reportedly engaged a Bumblebee V2 UAS. No details are provided, however, on how many quadcopters the system can track and manage at the same time.

Project Sandhills 2.0 builds directly on previous Army initiatives like the original Sandhills program, which spawned smaller unmanned ground vehicles built on utility ATV chassis (some of which were delivered to Ukraine for battlefield evaluation).