10 juin 2024 | International, Aérospatial
10 octobre 2018 | International, Terrestre
Decision coming soon on who will build prototypes for a new Army light tank
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The Army is expected to make a decision by the end of the year on which companies will build prototype vehicles as part of its light tank competition.
The requirement for a Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle to provide infantry brigade combat teams a protected, long-range, cyber-resilient, precision, direct-fire capability for early or forcible entry operations was first laid out in the Army's combat vehicle modernization strategy released in October 2015.
The Army is looking to rapidly procure this capability by turning to commercial off-the-shelf technology rather than spend years developing it.
Several competitors submitted offerings to the competition in late February in the hopes that they are selected to build 12 prototypes that will be demonstrated and evaluated — and that will ultimately lead to the service selecting a winner to go into production.
The low-rate initial production plans are for roughly 54 vehicles — 26 to start, with an option to build 28 more, as well as retrofitting eight of the prototype vehicles. The first unit equipped is planned for 2025.
If selected, the contractors have 14 months to deliver MPF prototypes to the Army.
A final request for proposals will likely come out in late October or November, and the service will make a decision shortly thereafter.
SAIC partnered with Singapore's ST Kinetics and Belgium-based CMI Defense; BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems all submitted written proposals, vehicles and armor coupons for testing.
The SAIC team integrated CMI's Cockeril 3105 turret on an ST Kinetics next-generation armored fighting vehicle chassis as its offering.
BAE Systems is offering an M8 Buford Armored Gun System with new capabilities and modernized components.
GD submitted an offering that combines a version of its latest Abrams turret with a chassis that leverages experience from the United Kingdom's AJAX program.
“We have additional new and proven technologies to meet MPF specific requirements,” a GD spokesperson said.
The Army has already moved through its testing and evaluation ahead of a decision later this year. Vehicle bid samples were tested to evaluate mobility and firepower performance, and the armor coupons were tested to evaluate protection performance.
According to Jim Scanlon, senior vice president and general manager of SAIC's defense systems group, the company did both pre-validation and follow-on testing of its vehicle offering before and after the Army's own evaluation period.
The company has brought the vehicle to the Association of the United States Army's annual conference.
If selected, SAIC plans to perform final integration work in its Charleston, South Carolina, facility, with the other companies in the team building their contributions in their own facilities.
However, Scanlon said, the company is working to come up with ways to do more and more of the production work in the United States, and both companies involved are on board and see moving some work into the country as a necessary investment as big combat vehicle programs gain traction. All options are being considered, Scanlon said.
BAE plans to build its EMD prototypes within its manufacturing network including York, Pennsylvania, Aiken, South Carolina, Anniston, Alabama and Sterling Heights, Michigan, according to the company's MPF capture lead Greg Mole.
GD said it would not release build locations for the vehicles at this time.
The MPF program now falls under the Army's Next-Generation Combat Vehicle cross-functional team's purview, which lies under the new Army Futures Command, charged with modernizing the force more rapidly to maintain overmatch against peer adversaries.
Sur le même sujet
-
-
9 octobre 2018 | International, Terrestre
Replacing the Bradley is the top priority for the Army’s next-gen combat vehicle modernization team
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The modernization team tasked with advancing the Army's next-generation combat vehicles is focused, as its top priority, on replacing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle with an Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, according to the team's leader, Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman. The OMFV is meant to “provide options to commanders in combat, so it's a decision to, manned or unmanned, gain contact with the enemy, and that can be visual or through firepower, and it actually provides options to commanders so that they can use the best way to accomplish their mission,” Coffman said in an interview with Defense News shortly before the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting. The Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team — established as part of the Army's new Futures Command — tackles the service's second highest priority out of six major lines of effort that are intended to fully modernize the force by 2028. The CFT has had many conversations with industry to determine what's possible. The team has laid out what it thinks will be the requirements for the vehicle, Coffman said, including aspects like an optionally manned capability, loading it on a C-17 aircraft, protection elements and lethality. Even though the Army plans to rapidly prototype and procure the OMFV, Coffman said the team will continue to roll new technologies in through constant experimentation, in parallel with OMFV procurement, so that the first OMFV that comes out and gets fielded is constantly improved. The Army will roll those improvements into manufacturing “so that we can always maintain the current technology on these vehicles,” he said. The Army is requesting that designs have lots of room for upgrades and to add in new technology. "We know technology will continue to move at the pace it is today or faster, and it is going to allow us to have enough physical space and computing power as well as propulsion power that, if we want to add things to these vehicles, we have the ability to build them [to be] the best they can be,” Coffman said. Jumping right in, the service plans to release a request for proposals, not just a draft, by the end of the year, Coffman said. It is anticipated that the proposals will be due in May next year, and then the Army will downselect to two competitors who will build 14 prototypes in an engineering and manufacturing development phase in the first quarter of fiscal 2020, according to industry sources. Coffman said he hoped to cast a wide net with industry, including looking to partners around the world for solutions. “We want them to bring us their best, and we will evaluate and downselect to some number and do a procurement contract at the end of the final evaluation,” he said. To accommodate for the OMFV effort and the other lines of development within the CFT's portfolio, the Army has downgraded its prototype activity within the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center. A year ago, the Army had kicked off a major prototyping effort to develop what the service was calling its NGCV by awarding an industry team a contract to build two demonstrators by fiscal year 2022. The Army awarded a seven-year, $700 million contract to a team consisting of SAIC — the team lead — as well as Lockheed Martin, Moog Inc., GS Engineering Inc., Hodges Transportation Inc. and Roush Industries. Jim Scanlon, senior vice president and general manager of SAIC's Defense Systems Group, told Defense News in a recent interview that while the initial plan was to build prototypes, the strategy has evolved. Now, the team is working on sub-system experimentation for TARDEC using Bradley assets, to test capabilities such as mobility systems and manned-unmanned teaming. SAIC, according to Scanlon, sees the Mobile Protected Firepower solution it is hoping to prototype for the Army as possessing technological capabilities that will serve as “hooks” — or a pathway — to fulfilling OMFV requirements. Other companies are likely to emerge with offerings for OMFV, including General Dynamics Land Systems, AM General and BAE Systems. BAE Systems brought its CV90 fighting vehicle, developed for the Swedish army, to AUSA. The Netherlands, Finland and Denmark are also customers of the vehicle. According to BAE, it brought the CV90 to the show as a starting point to discuss possible options for the NGCV program. Raytheon and Rheinmetall announced at the AUSA conference Oct. 8 that they are partnering to provide Rheinmetall's Lynx combat vehicle as its submission to the impending OMFV competition. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/replacing-the-bradley-is-the-top-priority-for-the-armys-next-gen-combat-vehicle-modernization-team
-
2 août 2023 | International, Naval
Successful Completion of Sea Trials for the Israeli Navy’s New EW Counter Measure Dispensing System by Elbit Systems
The trials tested the capability of the new maritime Electronic Warfare (EW) system to effectively respond to complex missile attack scenarios, including launching decoy rounds from several launchers against multiple...