US Army Announces Ground Combat Vehicle Contracts

The Army announced today the award of two con­tracts to BAE Sys­tems Land and Arma­ments, L.P., Troy, Mich. ($449,964,969), and Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Land Sys­tems, Inc., Ster­ling Heights, Mich. ($439,715,950), for the Ground Com­bat Vehi­cle (GCV) pro­gram tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment phase. These con­trac­tors have been select­ed to devel­op com­pet­i­tive, afford­able and exe­cutable designs for a new Army Infantry Fight­ing Vehi­cle (IFV) over the next 24 months.

The con­tract awards fol­low the Depart­ment of Defense’s for­mal approval of the GCV pro­gram to enter the tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment phase. Approval of this first major mile­stone builds on months of ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Army and the Office of the Under­sec­re­tary of Defense (Acqui­si­tion, Tech­nol­o­gy and Logis­tics) to suc­cess­ful­ly devel­op, build and field an afford­able, effec­tive and suit­able IFV. 

“The Army enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly wel­comes the for­mal launch of the Ground Com­bat Vehi­cle pro­gram, which will pro­vide much need­ed pro­tec­tion and mobil­i­ty to sol­diers in com­bat,” said Sec­re­tary of the Army John McHugh. “Giv­en the eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment the nation cur­rent­ly faces, the Army rec­og­nizes that it is imper­a­tive to con­tin­u­al­ly address require­ments as we build a ver­sa­tile, yet afford­able, next-gen­er­a­tion infantry fight­ing vehicle.” 

The department’s GCV acqui­si­tion strat­e­gy, which empha­sizes afford­abil­i­ty and a sev­en-year sched­ule, calls for aggres­sive explo­ration of GCV IFV capa­bil­i­ties trade-space via con­tin­ued require­ments and afford­abil­i­ty analy­sis dur­ing the 24-month tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment phase. As the Army final­izes GCV require­ments dur­ing this phase of the for­mal acqui­si­tion process, these efforts will enable the Army to real­ize pro­gram sched­ule and afford­abil­i­ty objec­tives. The Army remains com­mit­ted to a sev­en-year sched­ule as the appro­pri­ate amount of time nec­es­sary to design, devel­op, build and test the next-gen­er­a­tion infantry fight­ing vehicle. 

To devel­op a suc­cess­ful pro­gram with well-informed deci­sion points at each major mile­stone, the Army will under­take a three-pronged approach dur­ing the first phase of this effort. First, con­trac­tors will work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the Army to devel­op com­pet­i­tive, best-val­ue engi­neer­ing designs to meet crit­i­cal Army needs. Con­cur­rent­ly, the Army will ini­ti­ate an update to its GCV IFV analy­sis of alter­na­tives and con­duct sep­a­rate tech­ni­cal and oper­a­tional assess­ment of exist­ing non-devel­op­men­tal vehi­cles. Results from this assess­ment, along with con­trac­tors design efforts, will inform GCV require­ments to sup­port the next pro­gram mile­stone and facil­i­tate a full and open com­pe­ti­tion for the next phase of the GCV program. 

“This is an impor­tant mile­stone in our Army’s mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram. GCV is the first com­bat vehi­cle designed from incep­tion for an IED envi­ron­ment. It will pro­vide armor pro­tec­tion and the capa­bil­i­ty to maneu­ver cross-coun­try with the nine-man infantry squad.” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mar­tin E. Dempsey. 

The Army’s over­all strat­e­gy for devel­op­ing GCV is con­sis­tent with efforts to imple­ment acqui­si­tion reform and best acqui­si­tion practices. 

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact Lt. Col. Dave Ger­ck­en, 703–697-7592 (david.gercken@conus.army.mil), or Matt Hick­man (matthew.d.hickman@us.army.mil), 703–614-1522.

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs)