Past time to sole source contract the Marine Personnel Carrier...

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.
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

An industry day in early June?  New manufacturers are looking to participate?  Another round of testing?

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!