Oshkosh (OSK -0.80%) makes specialty vehicles for a variety of applications, and its defense segment accounts for almost half its revenue. With a market cap of $4 billion, the company is also competing for contracts against foes with much greater resources, such as General Dynamics (GD 0.28%) ($30 billion) and Lockheed Martin (LMT 0.01%) ($40 billion).

Oshkosh may not garner the headlines of some of its closest rivals, but the following chart shows what investors have been missing over the past five years.

OSK Chart

OSK data by YCharts

Oshkosh has now developed TerraMax unmanned ground vehicle technology, something that could give it a leg up on the competition. TerraMax provides safer ways to deal with improvised explosive devices and to clear routes on the battlefield.

Motley Fool analysts Blake Bos and Rex Moore caught up with John Beck, chief unmanned systems engineer for the Oshkosh defense segment, at the recent Unmanned Systems 2013 conference in Washington, D.C. In this second of a three-part series, Beck explains how TerraMax actually works.