General Dynamics showed up to Modern Day Marine 2026 with three business units, two booth numbers, and enough hardware to stock a small army — from a next-generation 8×8 reconnaissance vehicle with a 30mm cannon to an assault bridge mounted on an unmanned ground vehicle scheduled to begin testing in July.
The company’s presence at the April 28-30 exposition at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., spans land systems, mission systems, and European land systems — a cross-section of General Dynamics’ defense portfolio that reflects how comprehensively the corporation has positioned itself around the Marine Corps’ modernization priorities under Force Design 2030.
The headline platform at General Dynamics Land Systems’ Booth 2206 is the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle ARV-30, an 8×8 wheeled platform mounting a 30mm cannon and designed to deliver lethality while expanding the reconnaissance network across the modern battlefield. The ARV-30 is built to complement the ARV-C4UAS variant — the counter-drone configuration of the same platform family — and integrates multidomain sensor nodes with a remote turret that combines firepower, situational awareness, and connectivity in a single vehicle. Open architecture, automated data fusion, and cybersecurity measures built into the design allow Marine Corps units to coordinate across manned and unmanned assets simultaneously, extending command and control reach into complex environments where the Corps increasingly expects to fight. The ARV-30 is not a future concept — it is a platform on the show floor, in front of the acquisition officials and operators who will decide what the Corps buys next.
Sharing the Land Systems booth is the Digital Twin Sustainment Suite, a software system that takes a different but equally important angle on Marine Corps readiness. DTSS comprises three modules — self-guided e-learning, instructor-led training, and advanced maintenance — and is designed to improve how ground combat vehicle units train and maintain their equipment. The digital environment DTSS creates improves learning retention, training throughput, and maintenance efficiency for instructors, students, and maintainers alike. As part of the Integrated Logistics Support plan for ground vehicles, it addresses the sustainment side of the readiness equation that often gets less attention than the platforms themselves but determines whether those platforms are actually available when needed.
General Dynamics Mission Systems occupies Booth 2113 with a portfolio that runs from encryption to laser communications to assured positioning — the electronic and cyber backbone that modern military operations depend on but rarely see discussed alongside the vehicles and weapons that dominate defense coverage.
The RAMPART CMOSS Chassis is among the more technically ambitious items on display. Designed to enable a standards-based C5ISR ecosystem for the joint force, the chassis collapses multiple capabilities — assured positioning, navigation and timing, radio, and electronic warfare — into a single system built around 3U OpenVPX processor cards that can be inserted and upgraded rapidly. It fits within the SINCGARS radio space in any vehicle or platform, meaning it can go wherever a radio goes without requiring vehicle modification. The system runs at 100 gigabit interconnect speed, providing the data throughput that current and future sensor and communications loads will demand.
PhantomLink addresses a different communications challenge. The Free Space Optics system uses laser communications to provide high-bandwidth transport for mobile command posts, combining an optical terminal with a waveform-adaptable optical modem. The system operates outside regulated spectrum — meaning no frequency coordination, no spectrum deconfliction, and rapid deployment wherever military operations require it. Advanced error correction and pointing, acquisition, and tracking algorithms give it high link availability even in challenging atmospheric conditions, while its laser-based nature makes it inherently difficult to intercept. For a command post that needs bandwidth and doesn’t want its communications traffic exploited, PhantomLink offers a capability that radio frequency systems cannot replicate.
GPS Source’s Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing solutions — Fight Tonight and the Modified Reception Pattern Antenna — address the GPS-challenged environments that have become a standard feature of contested operating areas. The core of the system, the ED3M PNT Hub, has over 1,000 actively fielded units deployed across Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps platforms worldwide. The encryption portfolio rounding out the Mission Systems display — TACLANE high assurance encryptors, the Sectéra vIPer Universal Secure Phone, the ProtecD@R Multi-Platform Encryptor, and the GEM One Encryptor Manager — represents the classified communications and data protection layer that every other system in the booth depends on to operate securely.
General Dynamics European Land Systems, also at Booth 2206, brings three bridging systems that address the gap-crossing requirement that ground forces have needed solutions for since armies first encountered rivers and obstacles. The COBRA Armored Assault Bridge, displayed integrated onto a KOMODO unmanned ground vehicle from Dok-Ing, is the most forward-leaning of the three — a bridge layer that can be attached to the UGV while retaining all of the carrier vehicle’s original functions, capable of supporting loads up to MLC 120. Testing on the KOMODO is scheduled to begin in July, making this a system with a near-term milestone attached to its show floor appearance. The HYDRA Multifunctional Floating Platform, a modular pontoon system capable of functioning as ferry, floating bridge, transport boat, or working platform up to MLC 50, and the VIPER Modular Trackway Bridge integrated onto a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle — configurable in 5, 7, or 9-meter spans up to MLC 50 — complete a bridging portfolio that gives tactical units gap-crossing options from light to heavy without depending on dedicated combat engineer assets.
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