Three major defense companies, Epirus, General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), and Kodiak AI, have teamed up to develop a new autonomous vehicle for counter-uncrewed aerial vehicles (Counter-UAV) missions: the Leonidas Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV). The vehicle was unveiled at the recent AUSA Global Force Symposium & Exhibition expo in Alabama. Zona Militar spoke with Andrew Wargofchik, spokesperson for Epirus, about the Leonidas AGV and the company’s projects in Latin America.
Regarding Colombia, Wargofchik explained that Epirus is engaging the Colombian Ministry of Defense regarding the “potential of integrating” the company’s high-power microwave (HPM) platform “into their counter-UAS shield.”
The company is confident that other Latin American militaries and security services will similarly be interested in Epirus’s systems to combat drones operated by criminal gangs and narco-insurgents. The so-called narco-drones can transport explosives, drugs, or be utilized for surveillance missions. “The Leonidas high-power microwave platform is capable of supporting the Latin American counter-UAS initiatives” aimed at eliminating these threats. Wargofchik explained that the company’s technology is “scalable and modular, and works by injecting high levels of microwave energy into a precise volume of space, coupling directly into the electronics of incoming threats.
Latin American militaries are very interested in counter-UAV technologies. Case in point, the Colombian Ministry of Defense is seeking to develop a counter-UAV “national shield,” while the Ecuadorian air force recently completed a training course on counter-UAV missions.
As for the Leonidas AGV, the platform combines technologies from the three companies: GDLS provides the commercial-grade truck platform, Kodiak AI provides the autonomous driving system, and the payload is Epirus’ Leonidas high-power microwave system, designed to counter UAV threats. A press release issued by the three companies describes the AGV as a “mobile counter-UAS capability that can be operated without human intervention or teleoperated to extend the counter-UAS line of defense across fixed-site and expeditionary mission sets.”
The Leonidas AGV can defeat single, swarm, or fiber-controlled drone attacks and is ideal for protecting a variety of locations, including military installations and forward operating bases. According to Epirus, integration of the systems and platforms of the three companies “took less than four months.”
As for the future of the Leonidas AGV, Wargofchik confirmed to Zona Militar that the three companies are “planning Leonidas AGV testing events in the coming months to further mature the system and demonstrate its counter-UAS and shoot-on-the-move capabilities,” without providing specific details. The spokesperson did confirm that Epirus will be present at the upcoming Sea Air Space expo at the National Harbor in Maryland (near Washington, DC) to showcase its systems to the US Navy.
Zona Militar also asked about the US military’s response to the Leonidas AGV. To summarize, the response was “overwhelmingly positive” due to Leonidas AGV’s mobility, autonomy, and commercial development timeline, which “directly answers the modernization calls of the Department of War and US Army.” Wargofchik explained that the “Leonidas AGV is well-suited for a range of multi-service missions, including JIATF-401 homeland defense applications” as well as the defense of US Air Force assets and military installations.
The company has continued to test and showcase Leonidas’s capabilities through a variety of demonstrations and tests, including a December 2025 live-fire demonstration at an undisclosed US government testing site. The target was a fiber-optic guided UAV, which has become quite popular in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Also, last year, on 26 August, 2025, the company carried out another demonstration, this time against a swarm of UAVs. According to the company, Leonidas was tested against 61 drones across five operationally relevant flight scenarios. The result was very successful, as Leonidas managed to disable 61 of 61 drones and defeat a 49-drone swarm.
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