December 3, 2020 | International, Land
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on December 02, 2020 at 4:49 PM
WASHINGTON: The Army's already shared Oshkosh's Joint Light Tactical Vehicle design with rival companies, who hope to take over the program when a new competition is held in 2022. But, having announced a new $911 million order just yesterday, Oshkosh Defense is confident that it'll fend off all challengers and keep building JLTVs for years to come, general manager George Mansfield told me this morning.
“This contract really shows how the Joint Program Office feels about Oshkosh,” Mansfield said. “They're very confident we build a good quality product, [and] we are on time and under budget so far.”
In fact, Mansfield said, Oshkosh JLTVs were coming in so much under budget that the military was able to buy more vehicles in less time than the original contract anticipated. (And it did so despite cuts to the JLTV budget in recent years). That's why the Army — which runs JLTV on behalf of all the US armed services and seven foreign customers from Belgium to Brazil — had to issue the new contract this fall.
You see, in 2015, when Oshkosh beat aerospace titan Lockheed Martin and Humvee manufacturer AM General, the Army issued a production contract with a maximum value of $6.7 billion and a maximum quantity of 16,901 vehicles. That contract was supposed to last eight years, through 2022. Before it ran out, the Army would hold a new competition, open to all comers, with the winner – perhaps Oshkosh, perhaps a rival – getting a new contract to build JLTVs after 2022.
But Oshkosh kept selling JLTVs more cheaply than the 2015 contract had assumed. That meant the military could buy more vehicles more quickly, even with a reduced budget for JLTV. That meant, in turn, that it ran up against the 2015 contract's 16,901-vehicle maximum this fall, two years ahead of schedule.
So, to keep production going, the Army issued the new contract: an additional $911 million for 2,738 more JLTVs, plus 1,001 trailers and other kit. That brings the total on order to 18,073 JLTVs, of which over half – about 9,500 – have already been delivered.
What does a JLTV cost? That's tricky. Oshkosh doesn't divulge exact prices. The government's estimated Average Procurement Unit Cost per JLTV is $395,000 (once adjusted for inflation; it's $365,000 in 2015 dollars). If you just divide the dollar value of the new contract by the number of vehicles, the average cost per JLTV has fallen below $333,000. But the actual price per JLTV is actually a lot lower than that, because these contracts always include trailers, specialized mission equipment for different JLTV variants, spare parts and support.
The new contract allows the Army to order additional JLTVs through November 2023. That keeps production going through the re-competition, which is scheduled to award a contract in the second half of 2022.
Now, the re-compete is not about picking a new design. Instead, it's about giving the Army the option to pick a new manufacturer for the existing design. Under the terms of the original 2015 contract, the government bought the Technical Data Package that shows you how to build a JLTV and can give that data to any company it likes. In fact, several potential competitors have not only gotten the data package, they've actually leased JLTVs so they can reverse-engineer them.
But while competitors now have the JLTV design, they don't have Oshkosh's facilities, workforce or their years of experience actually building it.
“We've been manufacturing this vehicle for five years,” Mansfield told me. “We know how it's designed because we designed it, we know how to manufacture it, we've got a strong supply base. So I think we're in a very good position.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/12/jltv-new-911m-order-strengthens-oshkoshs-hand-for-recompete
January 5, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Experts say it may only a matter of time before either Russia or Ukraine, or both, deploy drones programmed to find and attack targets without humans.
August 14, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR
Ott Ummelas Donald Trump has taken credit for a rise in military spending by NATO states, but in the alliance's eastern reaches, it's his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who's driving the rearming effort. Last month, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg thanked the U.S. President for “clearly having an impact” on defense spending by allies while Trump said his demands had added $41 billion to European and Canadian defense outlays. But the jump in acquisitions behind the former Iron Curtain of aircraft, ships and armored vehicles began when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, well before Trump's 2016 election victory, according to analysts including Tomas Valasek, director of Carnegie Europe in Brussels. While the median defense expenditure of NATO members is 1.36 percent of gross domestic product, below the alliance's requirement of 2 percent, eastern members comprise seven of the 13 members that are paying above that level. “Countries on NATO's eastern border do not need Donald Trump to boost defense spending,” Valasek said. “They decided this long before he came to power. The spending boost was because of a president, but it was Vladimir Putin, not the U.S. President.” Constant overflights by Russian aircraft into NATO airspace, cyberattacks on government and military installations, wargames on the borders of the Baltic states and accusations that Russia was behind a failed coup in newest member Montenegro have put NATO's eastern quadrant on alert for what it says is an increasingly expansionist Russia. Of the 15 members exceeding the bloc's guideline that 20 percent of total defense spending should go to equipment, six are from eastern Europe. At the time of the NATO summit in Brussels, Romania said it would buy five more F-16s from Portugal, raising its squadron to 12, after it signed a $400-million deal to acquire a Patriot missile air-defense system with Raython in May. The country of 20 million people bordering Ukraine, Moldova and the Black Sea plans to buy 36 more F-16s, four corvettes, at least 3,000 transport vehicles and coastal gun batteries over the next five years. Slovakia also announced the purchase of F-16 fighter jets at the summit to replace its aging Russian Mig-29s in a deal that was years in negotiating. And last month, Bulgaria asked for bids for at least eight new or used fighter jets by October at a total cost of 1.8 billion lev ($1 billion). By end-2018, the government in Sofia plans to buy 1.5 billion lev worth of armored vehicles and two warships for 1 billion lev. Neighboring Hungary said in June that it had agreed to buy 20 Airbus H145M multi-purpose helicopters, the country's largest military purchase since 2001. NATO's European members are expected to spend around $60 billion on equipment this year, with the 13 eastern members accounting for about 10 percent, said Tony Lawrence, a research fellow with the International Center for Security and Defense in Tallinn. The newer members will together spend about $2 billion more on equipment this year than last, he said. According to NATO, seven of its 10 biggest spending increases will be in the east. “Since these nations' membership in NATO, there has been a clear inclination to foster and strengthen their link with the U.S.,” said Martin Lundmark, a researcher with Swedish Defense University in Stockholm. “By procuring strategic defense systems, they willingly become interdependent and inter-operable with the U.S.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-13/nato-s-east-is-rearming-but-it-s-because-of-putin-not-trump
November 10, 2024 | International, C4ISR, Security
Pakistan's Transparent Tribe and China-linked IcePeony target India, leveraging advanced malware tools for cyber espionage.