via Inside Defense.
AM General confirmed it is evaluating the requirements of the Marine Corps' Amphibious Combat Vehicle Increment 1.1 program and is weighing its options on whether or not it will participate in the competition.An industry day in early June? New manufacturers are looking to participate? Another round of testing?
Jeff Adams, spokesman for AM General, confirmed on May 1 the company is eying this new amphibious vehicle effort.
The company is competing for the Marine Corps' and Army's Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program. There are three contractors competing for the JLTV in the engineering and manufacturing development phase: Oshkosh Defense, Lockheed Martin and AM General. The Marine Corps plans to purchase 5,500 JLTVs and the Army plans to buy 50,000 JLTVs. A single company will be awarded a contract for full-rate production.
The JLTV will replace the military's aging humvee fleet. AM General is the prime contractor for the humvee program and it is the only government contract the company holds.
AM General considered partnering with a Turkish company to compete for the Marine Personnel Carrier program, according to a defense official.
The Navy's fiscal year 2015 budget documents revealed a drastic shift in the service's ground vehicle modernization strategy by purchasing a wheeled assault version over a tracked assault vehicle in the future years defense plan. The MPC was resurrected and is now dubbed ACV Increment 1.1.
The Marine Corps awarded $3.5 million contracts in August 2012 to General Dynamics Land Systems, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Science Applications International Corp. to build MPC prototypes.
The systems demonstration and studies phase of the contracts included a water performance evaluation; limited survivability evaluations, or blast tests; a human factors and stowage capacity study; and a study with industry to see how much of the vehicle will be built in the United States.
Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told Inside the Navy April 29 after an event at Marine Corps Base Quantico, VA, the Marine Corps Requirements Oversight Council met and validated the requirements for ACV Increment 1.1 that day.
On April 23, the Marines released a request for information for ACV Increment 1.1. Some of the required capabilities the Marines are looking for include: operate in a significant wave height of two feet and sufficient reserve buoyancy to enable safe operations; a high level of survivability and force protection; operate in four to six feet plunging surf with ship-to-shore operations and launch from amphibious ships as an objective; land mobility, operate on 30 percent improved surfaces and 70 percent unimproved surfaces; ability to integrate a .50 caliber remote weapon station with growth potential to a dual mount 40mm/.50 caliber RWS or a 30mm cannon RWS; carrying capacity to include three crew and 10 embarked troops as the threshold, 13 embarked troops as the objective, carry mission essential equipment and vehicle ammunition; and the ability to integrate a command, control and communications suite provided as government furnished equipment.
The program office will evaluate the technical capability of the vehicles to include protecting occupants from an under body mine blast, reserve buoyancy, weight growth, water speed, transit seaward and shoreward, water mobility environment, sand slope mobility and ride quality. Another category the Marines will evaluate is program management and processes, logistics support and test support. Other important evaluation criteria include energy, small business utilization, price and past performance in both the realm of relevancy and confidence, the RFI reads.
The RFI describes a "typical program schedule" that includes industry delivering 16 prototype vehicles beginning nine months after contract award, at a rate of four vehicles per month. In the RFI scenario the service uses April 2016 as the contract award date. The Marine Corps anticipates hosting an industry day in early July and responses to the RFI are due June 23. -- Lee Hudson
UNSAT!
It is PAST time for this to become a sole source, emergency procurement. We all know who the top vehicles are. Lockheed Martin/Patria's Havoc and BAE/Iveco Defense SuperAV.
Pick one!
SMH....again its just a "lets keep the ride going" mentality. If you really wanted this vehicle you would get it. Plenty of Vehicles out there that meet what they want out of the MPC (I refuse to call this the ACV, its not). Wake up and understand that we need this vehicle and now.
ReplyDeleteI think the procurement authorities are deliberately playing it safe here legally, they know that if they give out the contract early on to a sole source, all the other players are gonna cry foul and file cases. Also, look at the like where it says an Industry study to fign out how much of the cehicle can be made in USA. Looks like a lot of senators worried about how much work their respective constituencies will get.
ReplyDeletethe US Army did it without issue and they did less study on their Stryker than we have on the MPC. additionally US built vehicles is already a part of the MPC program. they're just dusting off the wording of previous attempts.
DeleteThe only good thing that can emerge from this "Competetion" is if there is a small print of the contract that says that winner or loser, all technology in every prototype once delivered will be US Patented and Owned. That way you can connercially sell it to others (Commercially/FMS etc.) and actually recover some of the costs if not profit. The US actually has the buying/bullying/lobbying power to make this happen and look at the price tag of 3.5 million for just the initial design stage prototypes, when commercial companies do R&D for their own models, they do it much cheaper and they still pay peanuts to the actual design team and retain all ownership to their work. This is done by companies all over the world, so let the US Govt. give them a tast of their own medicine.
DeleteThe Stryker. I have heard a lot about it. Its even been to our shores for joint exercises. In your opinion, how would you rate it ? is it good ?
Deletei'm of mixed feelings on the Stryker. Eric over at ELP Blog absolutely hates it. quite a few people love it.
Deletei note that none of our allies except the Canadians (that actually used it before us) have bought the vehicle and the Patria Havoc is much more popular so long story short....i'd have to see it in action...
General Dynamics was trying to hawk it here in India. Dont know what became of their efforts. Though I think it will be a decent vehicle here. We are not planning on holding on to Islamic Insurgency heavy population centres of Pakistan. Just need a highly mobile platform to follow right behind a screen of tanks and deploy Infantry.
Deleteyeah that sounds like the US Army plan but i still question mobility. can a wheeled vehicle actually keep up with tracked formations today? i say no. best example. the run into baghdad. but we'll see.
DeleteAnd unlike Zombies, the UN and Rights Watch people wont even let us shoot them in the Head.
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