Polaris Government and Defense

Polaris Government and Defense is the part of a Minnesota powersports company that ended up defining how special operations forces move the last few miles. Polaris Inc. was founded in Roseau in 1954, builds snowmobiles, side-by-sides and motorcycles, trades on the New York Stock Exchange as PII with revenue above $7 billion, and set up its government and defense arm in 2005. The idea was simple. Take a proven off-road chassis, harden it, make it fit inside a V-22 or under a helicopter, and sell it against purpose-built vehicles that cost several times as much. Final assembly stays in Roseau, with design and engineering work in the American Midwest.

The military line is built around ultra-light tactical mobility. MRZR started the category and has been in service more than a decade, carrying up to 1,500 pounds and seating two, four or six in an air-transportable package that a small team can maintain in the field, with a turbo diesel variant added to solve the single-fuel problem. MRZR Alpha is the current generation, developed for United States Special Operations Command under a seven-year contract and now bought by the Marine Corps as an ultra-light tactical vehicle under a sole-source indefinite delivery contract worth up to $98 million over five years, awarded in May 2026 and including a 5kW exportable power variant for the first time. DAGOR sits above it, an ultra-light combat vehicle developed with Roush that carries up to nine soldiers, weighs about 4,500 pounds and covers roughly 500 miles between fills, now in an A1 configuration. At the bottom of the range the MV850 is a single-seat military ATV for scouting and casualty movement.

The government side is quieter and larger in unit terms. Pro XD and RANGER utility vehicles do base operations work at home and overseas, moving people, tools and materiel around installations where a pickup is too big and a golf cart is useless. A seven-year General Services Administration light tactical vehicle contract covers federal buying across agencies. Beyond the vehicles, the unit sells training, fielding support, spare parts and sustainment for fleets that are often operating a long way from a dealer network, and it supports allied forces in dozens of countries through both direct commercial sale and foreign military sales channels. Keeping the commercial production line underneath all of it is the trick that holds unit cost down.

That cost position is why the category exists at all. An MRZR is cheap enough that a unit can accept losing one, light enough that a helicopter can carry it slung underneath, and simple enough that a soldier with basic tools can keep it running without a contractor field service representative standing over the engine bay. Ten years of MRZR service have proven the concept and the newer platforms inherit it. The exportable power variant points at where the requirement is heading, since dismounted formations now carry radios, jammers, counter-drone sensors and battery-hungry electronics that have to be charged somewhere, and a vehicle that generates 5kW starts to look like infrastructure rather than transport.