The New US Ground Combat Vehicle

[buglerbilly]

Vision For Ground Combat Vehicle Not Yet Clear

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued January 18, 2010)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

In April 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cancelled the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. At the time, he said that the FCS had been designed for a different environment than the one that the U.S. military now confronted. Secretary Gates tasked that service to come back to him with a plan to build a new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), one designed to meet the needs of the wars the Army could expect to fight.

The FCS was designed in response to a vision of future land warfare that centered on engagements between mobile, armored forces – the kind of war the Army thought it would fight against the former Soviet Union. The FCS’s design emphasized the need for rapid strategic mobility and the use of information superiority to ensure the tactical success. Vehicle weight, including for protective armor that provides survivability, was minimized in order to enhance transportability and tactical maneuverability. Great reliance was placed on the network of sensors and communications systems to protect the FCS vehicles by allowing them to avoid dangers.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan undermined the basic vision for the FCS. The high tech U.S. military was all but brought to its knees by insurgents employing relatively unsophisticated technologies such as improvised explosive devices (IED) and rocket-propelled grenades. In response, the Pentagon began a crash program to put additional armor on virtually all its vehicles and, after a few years of dithering, to develop vehicles specially designed to meet the need for enhanced survivability. The result was the eponymous Mine Resistant, Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles. The MRAPs sacrificed speed, off-road mobility and carrying capacity in favor of enhanced protection. A lighter version of the wheeled MRAP, the MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV), is being deployed in Afghanistan.

The Army is vague in public about the features it wants in the new GCV. What is clear is that the GCV will not be based on a vision of future conflict but rather on the need to respond to shortfalls in the existing fleets of armored vehicles. The Army has said that the GCV should carry an infantry squad and be as safe from blasts as an MRAP. If enhanced off-road mobility is required, the GCV will have to be a tracked system.

The Army’s plan is for the GCV to replace the Army’s fleets of M-113s and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The problem with this is that both those systems are deployed in Heavy Brigade Combat Teams, not the Infantry Brigade Combat Teams which are seeing most of the action in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Bradleys, if suitably upgraded, could continue to function perfectly well in the heavy brigades and even replace the M-113s. Moreover, Bradleys are employed currently in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside Strykers, MRAPs and up-armored Humvees in composite formations. So why does the Army want another infantry carrier? And why deploy it in the heavy brigades? If greater off-road mobility is desirable, what is wrong with the M-ATV or an enhanced protection variant of the Stryker (the design for which is already available)?

An alternative vision for the GCV is provided by Major General Robert Scales, U.S, Army (Ret.) in the current issue of Armed Forces Journal. General Scales argues that what should drive the design of the GCV is not survivability but the way tactical ground units in Iraq and Afghanistan operate. He points out that soldiers and marines today ride to the battle but then dismount to engage the insurgents. Their vehicles serve as “motherships,” providing a means for carrying all the equipment that encumber and weigh down ground warriors and as an expedient base or source of shelter from fire.

The other point General Scales makes is that our current family of survivable vehicles are virtually all wheeled. They suffer from restricted maneuverability in complex terrain. General Scales argues that the demands for survivability need to be balanced against the need for off-road mobility. General Scales proposes that the GCV be designed to transport a fully-equipped infantry squad rapidly over complex terrain and provide the means, including communications, weapons and carrying capacity, to serve as an expedient base or “mothership” for that squad.

Both visions for the future have the same weakness. They both assume that the current conflicts are the same as those we will fight in the future. The emphasis will be on counterinsurgency operations in complex terrain and small unit engagements.

Perhaps, but I would assert that the U.S. military is just as likely to face an opponent possessing a range of conventional military capabilities, including heavily-armored combined-arms formations. An MRAP on steroids, even if it runs on tracks and not wheels, is not the vehicle the military needs for that kind of operation. In addition, there are already more than enough counterinsurgency vehicles in the fleets, many tens of thousands of them.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army Musters GCV

Feb 2, 2010

By Paul McLeary
Washington



The reverberations from Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s decision last year to cancel the Pentagon’s ill-starred $160-billion Future Combat Systems (FCS) program have been felt nowhere more deeply than by the team tasked with designing the program’s Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV), which was billed as the Army’s infantry carrier of the future.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Army’s focus was on developing and procuring technologies that would allow troops to “see first, understand first, act first and finish decisively” when encountering a threat. This was integral to the design of the ambitious FCS suite of sensor and communications gear and the family of MGVs. While other parts of the FCS program were spun off in mid-2009, the MGV was canceled outright, buried under the sands of Iraq where the Pentagon was thrust into a shooting war it had not trained for, did not anticipate and which did not fit the FCS skill set. Instead of a battle where U.S. forces faced off against tank battalions fielded by a near-peer competitor, the war the Pentagon got was an eye-gouging street fight in the alleys of Iraqi towns, along with confusing cat-and-mouse raids in the mountains of Afghanistan. Standoff was measured in the distance between a buried roadside bomb and the underbelly of a lightly armored Humvee.

While most of the FCS technologies survived in some fashion, the MGV—with its ballooning weight and requirement creep—became the albatross of the system, given the difficulties of making it the hub of the complex FCS communications network, while also giving it the armor and protection needed to withstand roadside bomb blasts.

So in May 2009, Gates sent Army planners back to the drawing board, giving them a September 2009 deadline to deliver a new plan for the ground vehicle of the future, now dubbed the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). The Army has moved quickly to fulfill the secretary’s wishes, but at this point—since the Defense Dept.’s request for proposals was only handed down to industry in February—it is still too early to say anything definite about the GCV. But given what the Army is looking for, questions about the feasibility of designing a vehicle that can do everything expected of it remains a concern.

Here’s what is known so far: The Army hosted two industry days late last year to review “broad-level acquisition strategies and high-level requirements,” Paul Mehney, spokesman for the Program Executive Office for Integration, tells DTI. The Army also released to industry its “Manned Ground Vehicle Body of Knowledge” comprised of 40-plus “mature technology plans” that Mehney says are not requirements, “but making [industry] aware that the technology has matured.” The current schedule calls for 2-3 competitors to be chosen in late 2010 to fight it out for the right to design the vehicle, with an infantry carrier variant to be fielded in Fiscal 2017. “One of the things we’re emphasizing to industry is that you need to look at mature solutions,” Mehney says. “We don’t necessarily have time to look at immature technologies.”

Key requirements for the vehicle are survivability, mobility and versatility, which Mehney sums up as the “urban mobility of a Stryker, with the off-road capability of a Bradley and the survivability of an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle). The mobility requirements are as important as survivability, because you can’t make your battlefield commander’s movements predictable. You can’t limit his routes; you’ve got to be able to go in various terrain.” While there is no weight ceiling, the vehicle is required to be C-17- and rail-transportable. And in a nod to the irregular wars of the last nine years, as well as to the stability and humanitarian efforts that have become part of the military’s mission, the GCV will also be the first tactical vehicle with a non-lethal systems requirement. The GCV will carry troops, too. The Army is looking for designs that accommodate crews of three and nine infantrymen.

This ambitious agenda is enough to raise the eyebrows of skeptics and incur the wrath of those who find folly in the plan. “You can’t design a single vehicle to do everything,” Rand Corp.’s David Johnson tells DTI. “There is no single vehicle [or chassis] that’s going to satisfy the requirement.” Moreover, the requirement that the GCV be C-17-transportable does, in fact, impose a weight limit. But some analysts don’t see the need for a hard and fast weight requirement. Johnson says that when too much emphasis is placed on keeping a vehicle under a certain weight instead of designing it for the threats it might face, “what we end up doing is tying weight to a desire to deploy rather than employ [a vehicle].” This was, he adds, “the fundamental failure of FCS and of Stryker.” Johnson is concerned that the Pentagon has lost its appetite for heavier ground vehicles that provide mobile gun support and forced-entry capabilities. He points to the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) 60-ton Namer, an infantry vehicle that carries 12 troops, but which is almost twice the weight of the heaviest MRAP.

“What [the IDF] figured out is that when they go into urban terrain, protection is the preeminent issue,” he says, adding that the IDF pools big infantry carriers like the Namer, only pushing them out to units when they’re going into action, and as in Gaza, only after lighter forces have first breached enemy defenses. But eliminating weight restrictions is, of course, more difficult for the U.S. than for Israel, which only has to move men and material tens or hundreds of kilometers over land as opposed to transporting gear thousands of kilometers across oceans.

No one—not even the Army—knows just how much the new GCV is going to weigh, or what it is going to look like. Mehney did say the Army is looking for a modular design, where pieces can be switched out for different missions. He also said there is a network integration and interoperability requirement, and “you’ve got to give me growth potential in electrical computing power. You’ve got to be able to integrate the incremental network that we’re building. The key difference between this and the MGV in FCS is . . . we’re not going to restrict the development of this vehicle to a network, like in FCS.”

In essence, the Army is looking for designs that have the potential to grow and adapt as technologies mature and enemies learn. Mehney says the Army’s guidance to industry is that “you’ve got to build a growth potential factor into this, somewhere between 20 and 30%.” High on that list are things like the ability to upgrade power and power-generation capabilities, communication networks and survivability. “We are also making sure that industry realizes that the configuration of this vehicle and the employment options for commanders have to be broad-based, Mehney continues. “Don’t limit me to one technical solution because you made the vehicle. Contractor X has to make sure that [vehicle systems] can plug in to Contractor Y’s vehicle.”

All this has to be accomplished on a tight schedule. The GCV program is starting at Milestone A and will go though an analysis of alternatives during 2010. The Army is looking at achieving Milestone B in early 2013, with a first prototype in 2015, followed by a Milestone C in 2016, and the first production vehicle rolling out in 2017.

With a fleet that includes the Stryker, MRAP, Bradley and Humvee, and will soon have the M-ATV (MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle) and in a few years’ time the JLTV (Joint Light Tactical Vehicle), is there room for the GCV? Dean Lockwood, an industry analyst at Forecast International, thinks that “from a strictly research and development standpoint, [the Army] needs to work on developing something, but in the near term, there’s not really a requirement for it. In the future, yes, but then again, you don’t want to get stuck in one mindset.”

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Army's Ground Combat Vehicle: Too Big to Fail?

Posted by Paul McLeary at 2/3/2010 11:17 AM CST

In the massive $708 billion DoD budget released Monday, there's a provision for $934 million for work on the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle, which is slated to replace the canceled Manned Ground Vehicle that was part of the Future Combat Systems program that SecDef Gates scuttled back in April, ’09.

As it happens, I have a story in the February DTI looking at plans for the GCV. Key requirements for the vehicle are--not surprisingly-- survivability, mobility and versatility, which Paul Mehney, spokesman for the Program Executive Office sums up as the “urban mobility of a Stryker, with the off-road capability of a Bradley and the survivability of an MRAP.” While there is no weight ceiling, the vehicle is required to be C-17- and rail-transportable. And in a nod to the irregular wars of the last nine years, as well as to the stability and humanitarian efforts that have become part of the military’s mission, the GCV will also be the first tactical vehicle with a non-lethal systems requirement.

This ambitious agenda is enough to raise the eyebrows of skeptics and incur the wrath of those who find folly in the plan. “You can’t design a single vehicle to do everything,” Rand Corp.’s David Johnson tells DTI. “There is no single vehicle [or chassis] that’s going to satisfy the requirement.” Moreover, the requirement that the GCV be C-17-transportable does, in fact, impose a weight limit. But some analysts don’t see the need for a hard and fast weight requirement. Johnson says that when too much emphasis is placed on keeping a vehicle under a certain weight instead of designing it for the threats it might face, “what we end up doing is tying weight to a desire to deploy rather than employ [a vehicle].” This was, he adds, “the fundamental failure of FCS and of Stryker.” Johnson is concerned that the Pentagon has lost its appetite for heavier ground vehicles that provide mobile gun support and forced-entry capabilities. He points to the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) 60-ton Namer, an infantry vehicle that carries 12 troops, but which is almost twice the weight of the heaviest MRAP.

PEO Integration plans to release the GCV request for proposal later this month, after which industry will have about 60 days to respond. A competitive contract award for up to three contracts will take place in the fourth quarter of FY10, and the first vehicle prototype is due in FY15.

[buglerbilly]

Army’s Pouring $7B Into GCV

By Greg Grant

Thursday, February 4th, 2010 3:54 pm

The Army plans to spend at least $7 billion over the next five years to develop its new Ground Combat Vehicle and is determined to get a jump on the project, with $934 million slotted for work in 2011 and nearly $2 billion the next year in what is clearly an accelerated development. The GCV will replace the FCS manned ground vehicles, cancelled last year, as the base model for future combat vehicles; the Army has said the initial vehicle will be an infantry carrier.

At a briefing to reporters on Monday, Army budget chief Lt. Gen. Edgar Stanton, said the new combat vehicle’s ultimate design is still very much up in the air. Army budget documents released this week also say the new vehicle’s requirements are still being defined.

So where will the GCV money go in 2011? The Army wants builders to begin work on the GCV’s subsystems and modular components, such as the engine, drive train, suspension, armor, turret, weapons, active protection system and what it calls a “Mission Module Structure” to carry an infantry squad. Prototypes of the various subsystems are to be ready for testing in early 2012.

To get the process moving, the Army plans to award two competitive contracts in the fourth quarter FY2010. The Army expects builders to use mostly mature technologies in an “evolutionary acquisition approach,” that allows for the “maximum affordable competition” documents say. A subsystem preliminary design review is scheduled for fourth quarter FY2011.

The Army believes a modular assembly approach will facilitate adding technological upgrades, weapons, armor, automotive components and communications networks, over time to the original GCV design. How far along the various modular components are in development, their technological “maturity,” will be key to determining which company gets the GCV contract. “Building subsystems early will allow the contractors to validate key and critical portions of their vehicle designs and identify issues that can be addressed early and improve the robustness of the prototype vehicles,” the documents say. It would appear the Army has learned some valuable lessons from the FCS development fiasco.

Building a vehicle that can plug into the Army’s existing and future digital communications, surveillance and sensor architecture to provide soldiers “superior” situational awareness is a Key Performance Parameter (KPP). The vehicle itself will carry a variety of sensors to provide video feeds to crew and the infantry squad. The Army is also looking for a fuel efficient engine to power the GCV.

The GCV is to be equipped with a suite of non-lethal weapons in addition to a turret mounted cannon. Survivability against IEDs and mines will factor huge in the vehicle’s design and the hull must survive “Level 1 underbelly threats” and it must mitigate against “harmful accelerations” to crew and passengers.

Nothing in the budget material about vehicle weight, although there is a reference to “tracks” as a component part, so apparently it will be a tracked infantry fighting vehicle.

[Ecky]

Some very open and challenging requirements for the GCV - cross-country ability of Bradley, high survivability but can operate in narrow streets and complex urban terrain.
Ecky

Source: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4498478&c=FEA&s=CVS
Published: 15 February 2010

The Search for Innovation in Ground Combat Vehicle Bids
By KATE BRANNEN

The U.S. Army will not specify a maximum weight for its Ground Combat Vehicle, nor will it dictate whether the GCV should run on wheels or tracks.

Such flexibility in its upcoming request for proposals (RfP) is intended to allow industry room to innovate.

"Weight is not a goal or objective, but the second- and third-order effects of weight will be considered," said Donald Sando, director of the Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate for the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga.

For example, the vehicle must protect its occupants in heavy combat, but "has to be deployable on current strategic lift assets": Air Force C-5 and C-17 airlifters, sealift ships and rail cars, said Sando, who led the Maneuver Center team that developed the vehicle's requirements. The Army also wants the vehicle to have the cross-country legs of a Bradley or Abrams tank - that is, move better off-road than the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles fielded to Iraq and Afghanistan - yet also handle the narrow streets and bridges of complex urban terrain.

The GCV program is the Army's replacement for its Future Combat Systems (FCS) Manned Ground Vehicles effort, canceled by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last April. On Feb. 12, Army leaders met with Pentagon officials for the program's materiel development decision review, seeking approval to officially launch the effort and release an RfP for its technology-development phase. At the review, which was postponed a day by snowstorms in Washington, Pentagon acquisition executive Ashton Carter and others evaluated the service's proposed GCV requirements, acquisition approach and timeline, according to an Army source.

The RfP, once planned for release on Feb. 12, is now expected soon, said Army spokesman Sam Tricomo. Once the RfP is released, interested companies will have 60 days to respond.

The Army intends to award up to three contracts at the end of fiscal year 2010, according to budget documents.

REQUIREMENTS DEVELOPMENT
David Johnson, a defense analyst at the Rand Corp., a U.S. nonprofit policy think tank, said it is better to "optimize toward requirements" rather than focus on weight at the beginning of the development process.

"We have to find out what we need before we decide what it will weigh," Johnson said.

Moreover, Sando said, the GCV's weight will change: One requirement is that it accept modular armor that can be installed or removed as threats dictate. For example, the vehicle will be designed to withstand improvised explosive devices, but if that threat does not exist on a future battlefield, the commander will be able to remove the armor.

"We really haven't done that before," Sando said in a Feb. 12 interview.

The Army wants the GCV design to balance mobility, survivability and lethality, but that does not necessarily mean "one-third, one-third, one-third," he said.

Sando said the first variant of the GCV will be an infantry fighting vehicle that needs to be able to defeat vehicles similar to it on a battlefield.

Future variants may include ambulances and command centers.

The Army also wants the new GCV to be more reliable than current vehicles. Fewer breakdowns mean fewer spare parts and mechanics to install them, which reduces the number of soldiers who need protection.

The Army's 2011 budget request, sent to Congress on Feb. 1, revealed more details of the GCV plans. The service intends to spend roughly $7.2 billion between 2011 and 2015 to develop the vehicle, including $934 million in research-and-development funds in 2011 for contracts and other expenses related to the beginning of the technology-development phase.

The GCV request also contains the Army's $92 million plan to continue developing the Active Protection System, which has outlived the FCS program it sprang from.

Sando said the Army wants to field the vehicle quickly - prototypes in 2015 and production vehicles by the end of 2017 - so it needs technology that is feasible by the end of the decade. ■

E-mail: kbrannen@defensenews.com.

[buglerbilly]

Delay Continues For U.S. Ground Combat Vehicle

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 19 Feb 2010 14:31

Still waiting on Pentagon approval, the U.S. Army has not yet released a request for proposals for its new Ground Combat Vehicle program.

Sources said the delay is related to questions from Pentagon officials about the service's acquisition strategy and the program's cost estimate.

One source did not think the impasse was major and said an acquisition decision memorandum is expected in the next week or two, with a request for proposals soon to follow.

Army leaders met Feb. 12 with Pentagon acquisition executive Ashton Carter to get permission to officially launch the new GCV program. At the meeting, the Army did not get approval for a material development decision. Service and Pentagon acquisition representatives met again Feb. 17 to address the unresolved issues relating to the acquisition strategy, according to sources.

The GCV program is the Army's replacement for its Future Combat Systems (FCS) Manned Ground Vehicles effort, canceled by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last April.

According to a notice posted on Federal Business Opportunities, the request for proposals release date is now delayed.

"A specific date of RFP release is unknown at this time," a Feb. 12 notice said.

E-mail: kbrannen@defensenews.com

[buglerbilly]

Army Ground Combat Vehicle Plan May Be Unraveling

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued February 19, 2010)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

When defense secretary Robert Gates recommended cancellation of the Army's planned family of future combat vehicles last April, he emphasized the need to develop vehicles that incorporated the operational lessons of recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those lessons, which center on the threat posed by improvised explosive devices, tend to drive vehicle designs to heavier use of armor -- which impedes rapid deployability to war zones and mobility once the vehicles get there. But when the now-canceled Future Combat System family of vehicles was first conceived, the service was more concerned with getting to the fight fast, so it proposed vehicles that were light enough to be transported on C-130 cargo planes and relied more on awareness than armor to survive.

The problem with the latter approach, as then vice chief of staff Richard Cody admitted to one stunned group of pundits, was that "if you get hit, you die." Thus, once the IED threat got serious in Iraq, the amount of armor the service planned to use on the FCS family of vehicles began rising. By the time Gates shut the program down, the weight of the vehicles had roughly doubled, from 20 to 40 tons.

After Gates told the Army to go back to the drawing board, it conceived a new "Ground Combat Vehicle" that might weigh as much as 70 tons, according to Andrea Shalal-Esa of Reuters. That's about what an Abrams main battle tank weighs, and it doesn't sound like anybody's idea of a system that can be deployed quickly to places such as Afghanistan.

It appears the Army is spinning its wheels (or its treads), because the laws of physics won't allow it to design a system that is both easily deployable and highly survivable against emerging threats.

The obvious way out of this dilemma, as Army officials have frequently stated, is to come up with new vehicle protection technologies that don't weigh so much. Items like lightweight ceramic armor and active defenses that can either absorb or deflect the kinetic energy of enemy weapons without disabling vehicle and crew. But most of those technologies are not going to be mature in the near future, and so the service is forced to choose between fielding a more conventional, heavier vehicle relatively soon, or a more futuristic, lighter vehicle much later.

Insiders say "later" means something like 2025, given the time required to develop new technologies, integrate them into a vehicle design, test the results and then ramp up production.

Unfortunately, the threat may evolve considerably during the intervening period, and nobody is betting that the fiscal situation is going to improve. So although a solicitation for the new Ground Combat Vehicle may be released soon, the plan is looking increasingly tenuous.

If the proposed system really weighs 70 tons as Reuters reported, then policymakers will want to know what's so great about the new vehicle that makes it a better investment than simply upgrading the existing fleet of Abrams, Bradley and Stryker vehicles. And even if it is a clear leap ahead in terms of capability, there is the question of what to do about the elaborate battlefield network Boeing developed to link together the family of future combat vehicles.

It may look world-class today, but how will it look in 15 years, when the new vehicle finally starts reaching the troops in quantity?

This seems to be one program where the vision of future warfare is dimming fast.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army Requests Proposals for a New Combat Vehicle

February 25, 2010: The US Army TACOM Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC) released today the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Technology Development (TD) phase of the Ground Combat Vehicle program, designed to develop the next generation Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) for the U.S. Army. The Army has set aside $645 million in this year and FY11 budget to fund the program.

The development phase will span over seven years and include three phases. Through the 27 months first phase (TD) the Army will be able to test, evaluate and demonstrate Critical Technology Elements (CTE's) and formalize a set of requirements for the subsequent full system design phase. Later in 2010 the Army is planning to issue up to three cost-plus contracts for the TD phase, to be selected based on 'best value' contracting strategy. This phase will evaluate three concurrent developments, designed to meet the Army's requirements, based on relatively mature technologies (TRL 6+); prototypes of specific subsystems will also be evaluated. This phase will culminate with the preliminary design review and Milestone B scheduled for early 2013.

The next phase will be Engineering & Manufacturing Development (EMD), screening out one of the three TD contractors based on 'best value' represented by the three proposals. This phase will include the prototype fabrication, ballistic survivability testing of armor coupons, turret and hull, followed by the delivery of first prototypes by the end of 2014. These vehicles will go through extensive safety, mobility and limited user tests, providing operational insights about the new platform's performance.

By early 2016 the prime contractor for the Production and Deployment phase (P&D) will be selected. First production vehicles are scheduled to deliver 7 years from the initial award of the TD contracts.

Initial operational capability of the first battalion, fielding 29 IFVs is expected by mid 2018 with a full brigade fielded within a year. In total, about 62 vehicles will be produced through the Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) to equip combat units by the time the GCV enters full rate production in mid 2019.

The Army hasn't limited the participation of international companies although traditionally the Pentagon requires domestic prime contractors for programs of such magnitude. It is anticipated that at least some international cooperation could be achieved, at least regarding the survivability suite of the vehicle. While the Army has spent hundreds of millions on the development of advanced, lightweight armor for the FCS family of vehicles, these armor solutions have not yet reached maturity level required for the TD phase, at least regarding the threat levels considered for contemporary conflicts. Therefore, U.S. manufacturers could be relying on foreign technology to achieve the required protection. In past programs, including the Bradley reactive armor, the Stryker's RPG protection and some of the MRAP vehicles, the U.S. is relying on foreign armor solutions, and the GCV could follow suit as well.

In its directives for industry about the GCV survivability suite, the Army has not specified a mandatory to of hit avoidance (soft and hard kill systems - APS) or advanced lightweight armor, developed by the Army, except for the Base Level EFP armor, Level 1 kinetic armor for front, skirts and roof and Level 1 EFP armor. All other protection means are open for suggestion by industry. The Army has recently completed the evaluation of seven APS systems – three domestically developed systems and four provided by international suppliers. This evaluation was mandated by congress.

[buglerbilly]

Building a More Survivable ‘Future’ for the Army

By Nathan Hodge February 26, 2010 | 11:33 am



The Army once planned to build a family of networked, electric-powered combat vehicles that would use information — instead of inches of armor — to help them survive on the battlefield. Now, it looks like the service is completely rethinking its approach.

Yesterday, the Army issued a request for proposals for a new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), a fleet of armored vehicles that can survive everything from relatively primitive roadside bombs to the latest anti-tank weapons. It’s an important shift: Instead of building next-gen tanks and infantry carriers suited for fighting a high-end, conventional adversary, the Army wants a more versatile vehicle that can survive “asymmetric” threats.

Speaking today at the Association of the United States Army convention in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said the new vehicle would take into account the lessons learned from fighting insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Stew Magnuson of National Defense magazine has the key quote: “It is not just FCS warmed over,” Chiarelli said.

The general was referring to Future Combat Systems, the service’s ill-starred effort to replace its heavy armor brigades with lightweight, networked combat vehicles. Last year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates Defense Secretary Robert Gates effectively scrapped those plans, saying that FCS vehicles did not take into account the threat from lethal, but relatively low-end, roadside bombs.

“The FCS vehicles — where lower weight, higher fuel efficiency, and greater informational awareness are expected to compensate for less armor — do not adequately reflect the lessons of counterinsurgency and close-quarters combat in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Gates said.

But that doesn’t mean that the GCV will just depend on armor. According to National Defense, Chiarelli said the new vehicle would be able to incorporate some kind of active protection — the ability to detect and shoot down incoming rocket-propelled grenades or anti-tank guided missiles. The service has already worked on active protection technology: The video here shows the Raytheon “Quick Kill” active protection system developed under the rubric of the FCS program.

[buglerbilly]

BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman Team for the GCV

BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman Corporation have announced a teaming agreement to pursue the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program.

BAE Systems will serve as the prime contractor in this partnership. This is the first teaming announced for the program. The Army intends to award contracts to as many as three competitors this fall with production expected to begin in 2017.

BAE Systems along with General Dynamics Land Systems were the two developers responsible for the now cancelled Mounted Ground Vehicle (MGV), which the GCV will succeed. The company is the top supplier to the U.S. Army’s Heavy Brigades. Northrop Grumman will serve as the lead for vehicle electronics and C4ISR.

“Together we bring an experience level of combat platform production and C4ISR integration capabilities to the GCV program that is unsurpassed by our competitors." Said Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Joe G. Taylor, Jr., vice president, ground combat systems at Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman's role in the team will be responsible for integration of command and control hardware and software, computers and communications equipment, sensors and sensor suites for intelligence gathering and force protection, and other functionality that requires ‘plug and play’ with the internal network or provides situational awareness across external networks.

[buglerbilly]

I'll stick this here although it has big elements of JLTV in here.................

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Toward a Tactical Vehicle Strategy

Posted by Paul McLeary at 3/2/2010 7:14 AM CST


Newly-fielded M-ATVs in action in Helmand, Afghanistan (Pic: USAF)

Late last week during the Army’s annual AUSA convention in a rainy, chilly, Ft. Lauderdale, my colleague Bettina Chavanne and I had the chance to sit down with Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, the Deputy Commanding General of the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC)

We were there to talk about Army modernization, and Gen. Vane, as usual, was pretty frank in his assessments. Sitting in a large room with wall-length windows overlooking the convention floor, Vane bristled at the suggestion that the Army lacked a coherent tactical vehicle strategy for the future, retorting “the current is always going to beat the future…and that was a challenge we had with [the cancelled Future Combat Systems’ Manned Ground Vehicle.]” He added that his staff has “been pushing pretty hard” to examine the current set of systems to decide what characteristics the vehicles need to have, and how can the systems already in the Army’s inventory can be upgraded to meet new and future threats. In short, the Army is trying to figure out how to “decide when to just reset, divest of something, or buy new. So that is broadly the strategy to apply that [to existing systems], then to current or future systems.”

When it comes to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Vane expressed frustration with some aspects of the vehicle’s development. “We’re going to have to make some modifications to that in the requirements document,” he said, “and both ourselves and the Marine Corps are largely in agreement. Details of the changes we’ll have to negotiate and figure out the cost benefit, but clearly some adjustments are going to need to be made.” Rickey Smith, director of ARCIC stepped in to add that “some of those are based on opportunities where the industry has done better.”

“It’s opportunity and need,” Vane continued. “I don’t think we challenged ourselves enough on fuel efficiency on JLTV for example, I think we could do a lot better. We didn’t get any hybrid vehicles, we didn’t get anybody using alternative fuels, why didn’t we?" Bettina pointed out that one of the rejected proposals was, in fact, a hybrid design (the submission by Northrop Grumman and Oshkosh), and Vane agreed that "we set the bar too low,” but didn't eloborate as to why the hybrid design didn't move on in the competition.

Then, of course, there is the Army’s other big ground vehicle program: the Ground Combat Vehicle. Arising from the ashes of the canceled Future Combat Systems program, the vehicle is still in the early stages of its development, with the Army just last week releasing an RFP to industry. Rickey Smith said that the Army is looking at a modular approach to vehicle development (I covered most of this in the February issue of DTI) in everything from the armor to the network package.

He called it an “open architecture approach,” which in layman terms means you “slap a box in, pull a box out every two years or whatever…you’ve got to make it more modular in the sense of upgrading it as you go.” That means building the vehicle with the ability to be easily upgraded every couple years as technologies and missions change. “You have to be thinking about that in the most opens sense of architecture,” he continued, “not only in the sense of hardware but in the physical device and space and capacity.” On the equipment side, if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught the Army anything, it's that that “the ability to grow and change is an operational requirement,” as Gen. Vane said. “You are going to change it,” the only question is when, and what.

[buglerbilly]

More GCV Details Emerge



I was on a reporter’s conference call yesterday with Army Maj. Gen. Keith Walker, the service’s Future Force Integration Directorate Commander, who discussed Army modernization post FCS. I asked him about new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Infantry Fighting Vehicle and how he sees it fitting into the future force. The GCV is intended to replace the Bradley, he said, and will also be used as a battlefield medical vehicle.

The number one priority of the GCV, according to what’s written in the initial capabilities document and the capability development document, he said, is to provide armored protection to the soldier, particularly against IEDs. Close behind it is mobility. “The MRAP is not mobile off the roads… protect the individual soldier, having a mobile off-​​road capability and having it networked… are the three [priorities] that come to mind.”

I asked him about GCV strategic mobility, which back in the day was the main goal of the FCS manned ground vehicles (seen above in an artists rendering), to be light enough to fly full brigades to distant battlefields. To be useful in a place like Afghanistan the GCV would have to be lighter than the 30 ton Bradley which is too heavy to fly there in any real numbers.

“We would hope that it would be lighter [than a Bradley], but there are some mathematics here. To survive an IED you’ve got to heavy up,” Walker said. The Army’s goal is to build an off-​​road mobile, heavily armored infantry fighting vehicle, but build it in such a way that it can be made lighter over time. Hence, the modularity concept that figures so prominently in GCV design.

“It’s written in the requirements that as technology changes and allows the vehicle to lighten up, that we can do that. The exact opposite of what we’ve done the last eight years where we’ve taken a Humvee and slapped appliqué armor on them and they’ve gotten heavier and heavier… to be able to take advantage of technology to make it lighter over time.”

“I suspect it would be heavier than a Bradley to start with and the idea is that we would be able to lighten up over time as technology enables us to,” Walker said.

With the Army talking about replacing the Bradley fleet, I can understand, as one industry source told me, why Bradley builder BAE Systems is right nervous. They stand to miss out on serious recapitalization money if the decades old Bradley fleet is retired. Although, some think GCV will face long development delays if for no other reason than the country’s rather dire fiscal situation will put a crimp on major new weapons programs. Best case scenario for BAE is GCV gets delayed and Bradley fleet is recapitalized over the next decade, and they wrap up the GCV contract if that program ever gets going.

When I spoke to BAE executives last fall, they sounded pretty confident they would win GCV because, as they said, they’re the premier infantry fighting vehicle builder. To boost their chances, BAE announced this week that they’ve teamed with Northrop Grumman to leverage the latter’s networking and sensor expertise.

[buglerbilly]

Army Ground Combat Vehicle Request for Proposal Released

(Source: US Department of Defense; issued March 2, 2010)

The Army released last Thursday a request for proposal (RFP) for the technology development phase of the Infantry Fighting Vehicle being developed under the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) effort. The Army has worked extensively with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to develop this program.

The GCV acquisition program will follow Department of Defense best acquisition practices and be a competitive program with up to three contract awards. The GCV development effort will consist of three phases: technology development, engineering and manufacturing design and low rate initial production. The Army anticipates awarding the first contracts for the technology development phase in the fourth-quarter of fiscal 2010.

The technology development phase involves risk reduction, identification of technology demonstrations, competitive prototyping activities, and planned technical reviews. Industry will have 60 days to submit proposals to the Army for this development effort.

The Ground Combat Vehicle effort is part of a holistic Army plan to modernize its combat vehicle fleet. This includes incorporating Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles into the fleet while modernizing current vehicle fleets including Stryker.

The first Ground Combat Vehicle will be an Infantry Fighting Vehicle offering a highly-survivable platform for delivering a nine-man infantry squad to the battlefield. The GCV is the first vehicle that will be designed from the ground up to operate in an improvised explosive device (IED) environment.

It is envisioned to have greater lethality and ballistic protection than a Bradley, greater IED and mine protection than an MRAP, and the cross country mobility of an Abrams tank. The GCV will be highly survivable, mobile and versatile, but the Army has not set specific requirements such as weight, instead allowing industry to propose the best solution to meet the requirements.

Prior to the release of the RFP, the Army engaged with industry through a series of industry days to inform them of the government’s intent for GCV development and gain their feedback from potential contractors about GCV requirements and emerging performance specifications.

In response to these initiatives the Army received significant feedback and insights on requirements, growth, training, test and the program at large thereby informing the requirements process and indicating the potential for a competitive contracting environment. (ends)

Army Solicits Proposals for New Combat Vehicle

(Source: US Army; issued March 2, 2010)

WASHINGTON --- The Army released a request for proposal for the Ground Combat Vehicle Feb. 25 -- marking an official start for defense contractors to begin competing for the right to build the service's next combat vehicle.

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli said the new vehicle will not be simply a rehash of the cancelled Future Combat Systems, but a relevant combat vehicle based on Army experiences in combat.

"This is a vehicle here that takes into account the lessons of eight years of war. It is not just FCS warmed over," said Chiarelli, during a video teleconference, Feb. 25, with attendees at the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The general said key performance parameters for the vehicle include, among other things, full-spectrum capability, net-readiness, and mobility. It should have the operational mobility of the Stryker and underbelly protection of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP, according to the Brigade Combat Team Modernization Plan released Feb. 19.

Chiarelli said the Army is hoping for "three solid proposals" on the RFP -- those proposals must be in by April 26. The Army will then award technology development contracts to bidders in September -- marking milestone A in the GCV development process. Contract awardees will then enter the technology development phase that runs through December 2012.

Ultimately, Chiarelli said, the Army expects to award a low-rate initial production contract for the GCV by March 2016, and achieve initial operational capability in the second quarter of 2019.

Chiarelli said adaptability to the operational environment is key for the GCV. "It will allow commanders to make a determination on what level of protection they need on that vehicle based on the enemy situation they find themselves in," he said.

Chiarelli also discussed the nature of America's enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, countering claims they are less than capable adversaries.

"They are truly formidable adversaries," Chiarelli said. "But because they are not state-sponsored, many dismiss them as not being worthy opponents. There are those, and I'd argue too many, who somehow think because they are terrorists, they are not as capable opponents as we have fought in past conflicts."

The general also pointed out the enemy's adeptness at passing information to its lowest foot soldiers. "The enemy is very, very good," Chiarelli said. "In fact, he has done a much better job, in some instances, in pushing information down to the tactical edge -- his tactical edge. He doesn't have the same security requirements that we do, in doing that. But he has been more than willing to push that information down, using technology."

The enemy's lack of information security, however, is a weakness that can be exploited by the Army, Chiarelli said.

"The fact that he lacks some of that security has in many ways allowed us to track him down," he said. "We end up catching or killing many of his fighters as a result. But he is willing to accept those losses."

The general also said the way the Army has operated has changed, as Soldiers at the farthest reaches of the battlefield are today providing as much information upstream to commanders as commanders are pushing information downstream. The change has resulted in a need to move decision-making responsibility closer to the Soldier.

"I believed you had a period (in the past) when decision making basically flowed from the top on down," he said. "Orders were given to the different levels of the chain of command. Today, we see as much information being passed up, from the edge, as we see being passed down from above. Whereas before we had decision making, very strict decision making, today, we have commanders who provide intent to Soldiers that are down on the edge."

Facilitating the faster, more secure flow of information is something Chiarelli said the Army is working on by developing its information network, including the "Everything over Internet Protocol" concept.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

I'll stick this article here altho its about more than just GCV..................

U.S. Needs Plan For Tactical Vehicle Fleet

Mar 10, 2010

By Paul McLeary
Washington

Given the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on its fleet of tactical wheeled vehicles since the start of hostilities in Afghanistan in 2001, and the changes those vehicles have undergone, it is amazing to think that the Pentagon still has no discernable strategy for where to take its tactical vehicle fleet in the future.

Just last month, Marine Corps Systems Command announced that it would spend another $1 billion on 1,200 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles for Afghanistan. The Marines, who buy MRAPs for all the services, awarded General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada (GDLS-C) a $227.4-million delivery order to produce 250 RG-31 Mk5E vehicles, which would add to the fleet of 1,402 RG-31 Mk5 vehicles already supplied to the U.S. by General Dynamics.

At the same time, Navistar Defense was awarded a $752-million contract to provide 1,050 enhanced International MaxxPro Dash MRAPs, which the company says will incorporate the DXM independent suspension. “This upgrade further improves the vehicle’s off-road capabilities, which is vital given Afghanistan’s lack of road infrastructure,” a company statement says. Since May 2007, Navistar has delivered 7,494 MaxxPro MRAPs to the Defense Dept., as well as 8,100 International 7000 Series vehicles to the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. Navistar says that work will be done in Garland, Tex., and West Point, Miss., with deliveries set to begin in April and be completed by summer.

A Navistar official tells DTI that there are “quite a few small changes being incorporated at the request of the customer. Examples include door and insulation upgrades, as well as the addition of an inclinometer, which acts as a level and measures side slope during vehicle operation.” In response to e-mailed questions, Marine Corps Systems Command affirms that “each of the MRAP Category I vehicles put on contract Feb. 12 (1,050 of the Navistar MaxxPro Dash, 250 of the GDLS-C RG31A2, and 58 of the BAE RG33), will be equipped with independent suspensions. The trucks will be allocated mostly to the Army and Special Forces. The independent suspension allows troops to better navigate Afghanistan’s rocky terrain and travel on less predictable routes.”

Note the absence in these comments of any mention of armor.

Even the new MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV), which is built to withstand the same blast level as an MRAP, while being lighter and more maneuverable, isn’t leaving the assembly line with a full armor solution in place. Vehicle maker Oshkosh has signed contracts worth $4 billion and counting to supply more than 6,600 of the trucks, and the company has announced several additional contracts with the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command’s Life Cycle Management Command to supply 795 armor add-on kits to the fleet, bringing the total awards the company has won to $107 million for the kits. If all of these trucks received the extra armor—even if the number stayed at 6,600—that would mean about $800 million more tacked on to the program. And all this comes after the Pentagon has spent about $30 billion on an MRAP fleet that it doesn’t seem to know what to do with once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over.

As the new add-on armor contracts show, bolt-on solutions seem to have become the order of the day, with everything from MRAPs to Humvees, to Strykers, to Bradleys to M-ATVs receiving bolt-on kits in theater. While the kits provide much-needed extra protection against roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, they also add weight while driving up the cost of the vehicle.

Last spring, General Dynamics signed several contracts for add-on armor kits for the Stryker and Bradley. In May, the company inked a $150-million deal to produce reactive armor tile sets for the Stryker family of vehicles, followed by a $37-million contract to supply the Army with reactive armor tile sets for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The reactive armor system is made up of tiles that fasten to the exterior of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, allowing it to better withstand a direct hit from antiarmor munitions. In January, the company received another $33 million for Bradley tile sets.

So, what kind of armor is the Army looking at for its next generation of tactical wheeled and tracked vehicles? “There is no question that composites are the wave of the future,” says Doug Templeton, acting senior technology expert for survivability at the Army’s Tank-Automotive Research Development and Engineering Command (Tardec). “I’m not sure that we’re going to see an all-composite vehicle in the next two years, or the next five years, but I would not be surprised to see it in the next 10 years.”

Templeton says that the biggest stride he’s seen in vehicle armor over the past several years has been the adoption of ceramic armor packages. The advances made in the use of silicon carbide, “which is really our benchmark ceramic now,” have been made possible in part by the reduction in the cost of the materials needed to produce such solutions. He tells DTI that “all of that work is being leveraged now because the cost has come down—it now makes it much more attractive for tactical vehicles to use that armor. All of the new vehicles are making use of the material—all of the vehicles that are going through the long-term armor strategy that are being up-armored are using metallic laminates, and a number of them have been able to move to ceramics, which actually give lighter weight and higher performance.” Ceramics do produce a small spike in the cost of the armor package, he admits, but the tradeoff is that “you’re getting a huge increase in capability, along with a weight reduction.”

While ceramic armor of some form has been incorporated in vehicles like the Stryker, the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck and the M-ATV, Pentagon planners still prefer steel to ceramic, says Marc King, president of Ceradyne Armor Systems. “The idea of change is occurring slowly” in the industry, he says. “The customer is still attached to metal armor solutions. In my opinion, compared to the Europeans, the U.S. military has been slow to embrace some of the more advanced lighter-weight armor solutions that are available: ceramic, composites and combinations of various materials that have been well accepted in the European military market for many years. The improvements in technology over the last eight years have been pretty dramatic. We’ve gotten much better at it because there has been a driving need for it.”

Ceradyne developed the Long Term Armor Solution in response to a Tardec requirement, “but in the end [the Army] stuck with an aluminum solution at 32 lb./sq. ft. [Ceradyne’s] solution is 18 lb./sq. ft.”

Thomas Meitzler of Tardec adds that some of the challenges to using more ceramic armor would be real-time health monitoring when there is a crack or some damage to the armor that reduces its ballistic protection. “What we’re doing is looking at ways to embed real-time health-monitoring sensors and transducers in the armor material itself,” he says.

Tardec is looking at ultrasonic transducers for real-time health monitoring. “We’re also considering putting accelerometers into the structure of the armor to get an idea of the blast intensity the vehicle experiences. That gets toward the idea of having an intelligent vehicle from which you can get information about the scenario a soldier experiences.” He adds that the monitors would neither add to the weight of the vehicle in any real way nor use too much power—an issue tactical vehicles struggle with in theater.

There are only so many ways that cost, weight and protection can be crunched, and “you can’t really change the physics involved,” Chris Chambers, vice president and general manager of BAE Systems’ GTS Programs, tells DTI. “So what you’ve got to try and do is offer a choice. Ideally, you allow the tactical commander the choice. But that’s a difficult one to square because the logistic load would be too great. Another way to say this would be that after eight years of war, and with a big vehicle reset coming, the Defense Dept. needs to come up with a tactical vehicle strategy that guides industry in the right direction.”

[buglerbilly]

Army Developing New Ground Combat Vehicle

(Source: U.S Army; issued March 16, 2010)

The U.S. Army's Feb. 25 release of a formal Request for Proposal, or RFP, to industry marks a significant step forward in the effort to build a first-of-its-kind, highly versatile Ground Combat Vehicle, more commonly referred to as the GCV, - a nine-man squad Infantry Carrier that can protect against IEDs and other threats, move in urban and off-road terrain and accommodate emerging technologies such as lightweight armor composites and electronics as they become available, service leaders said.

The Army -- in close cooperation with its industry partners who have 60 days to respond to the RFP -- aims to produce competitive prototypes by 2015 and production vehicles within seven years by 2017.

"It is important to note that within the RFP you are not going to see a weight requirement. What you will see and what we are emphasizing is the GCV has to be a versatile vehicle. This will probably be one of the most versatile vehicles that the Army has ever designed. If you look at survivability or armor protection, we are going to have a modular design, meaning we can have scalable armor kits so the commander can decide how protected that vehicle needs to be for the mission," said Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli. "We are giving commanders the capability to tailor survivability for a given situation."

The Army Acquisition Executive, Dean G. Popps, credited the Under Secretary of Defense for ATL, the DoD's Defense Acquisition Executive (DAE), and his team for their assistance in getting the Army to the RFP release date as planned. "Dr. Ash Carter, his staff and OSD key players provided critical insights, guidance, and strategies during the Material Development Decision Defense Acquisition Board (MDD-DAB) process and during RFP peer review. Their efforts and oversight were exceptional," said Popps.

"We have learned from the Future Combat System program -- over 40 technologies -- and we have incorporated that inside of a GCV construct. FCS -- plus what we know today from eight years of war --- has resulted in the release of an RFP for GCV. We could not have done this without industry; this is a partnership between our Army and industry to make sure we do the right things to make sure we put this capability in the hands of the warfighter," said Lt. Gen. Bill Phillips, military deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA ALT).

Industry proposals will work with the Army to examine potential material solutions for the vehicle's requirements which seek to manufacture an unprecedented blend of protection, mobility and emerging technologies in a single, highly-survivable infantry carrier.

The initial phase of the GCV Program is being executed by the Program Executive Office for Integration, primarily because of the residual expertise inherent in that PEO from the Manned Ground Vehicle research and development era. At an appropriate time, in the coming 12-14 months, the current plan calls for the program to move to PEO-Ground Combat Systems in Warren, Mich. All of the Army's PEOs report to the Army Acquisition Executive (AAE).

The Army plans to award up to three Technology Development contracts by the fourth quarter of this year, marking a roughly 27-month period in which to test and mature sub-components and other material elements of the designs prior to the prototyping phase, in 2015, Army officials said.

"The GCV will address capability gaps we have identified from eight years of war --- such as mobility for our soldiers both inside and outside cities, improved information sharing for both mounted and dismounted soldiers while on-the-move. The GCV will be required to carry an entire infantry squad in one vehicle and protect it with sufficient space and electric power to accept network and other improvements as they occur," said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of Army Capabilities Integration Center, Fort Monroe, Va.

Approaching the vehicle's development in an incremental fashion -- thus allowing for it to adjust to and incorporate technological change -- will increase the Army's ability to innovate and respond to the fast pace of change anticipated on the battlefields of today and tomorrow, Vane said.

Alongside formally releasing the RFP, the Army is also concurrently conducting an Analysis of Alternatives (AOA) in order to ensure that its plans for the GCV represent the best solution for the future, Mehney added.

"We are making sure that the GCV is the right material fit for the requirements we have been given. The Analysis of Alternatives is taking place at the same time as the RFP. It is our intent to complete the AOA by late summer 2010," he said. "This will precede the contract award, so if the analysis of alternatives says you need to do something differently than have a new vehicle program, we can respond to that prior to the contract award."

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Lawmakers: Is U.S. Army Moving Fast Enough on GCV?

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 25 Mar 2010 18:14

When the U.S. Army announced last year that its Ground Combat Vehicle would be ready in five to seven years, it was met with some skepticism that the service would be able to accomplish the task that quickly. But some lawmakers are asking whether the service is moving quickly enough.

"Given all the work done under the [Future Combat Systems] program, the lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan … and the experience of rapidly fielding the MRAP vehicles, isn't seven years a long time?" Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., asked senior Army officials March 25.

The Ground Combat Vehicle is to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle beginning in 2017. A request for proposals was released Feb. 25, and companies have until April 26 to submit proposals for the 27-month technology development phase.

Dicks, who serves as chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, asked service officials whether rapidly fielded MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles) could serve as an acquisition model for the new vehicle program.

Lt. Gen. William Phillips, military deputy to the Army acquisition executive, said the service asked itself the same question.

"Within the Army, this has been a great debate … and we continue to debate it," said Phillips, testifying before the subcommittee.

But, Phillips also highlighted the differences between the two vehicles and why the service thinks they require different acquisition approaches.

Because the MRAP was fielded so quickly, testing was limited, said Phillips. For the Ground Combat Vehicle, the Army plans to follow Defense Department acquisition-reform guidelines that call for more extensive testing through the use of competitive prototypes, he said.

The requirements for the Ground Combat Vehicle also require a level of development work that takes time, unlike the MRAPs, which relied on commercially available technology, he added.

Dicks said he thinks acquisition programs that have moved faster have been more successful than those using a more traditional approach.

Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, and Army Secretary John McHugh fielded similar questions March 23 when they testified before the same committee.

"We said, is there something out there that we could take and would meet our needs? And the answer was no," said Casey, who also noted the difference in complexity between a troop carrier like the MRAP and an infantry fighting vehicle.

[buglerbilly]

Canadian Army Missions Win Priority for Vehicle Programs

By Dave Pugliese

Published: 19 April 2010

VICTORIA, British Columbia - Fiscal problems have stalled Canadian Air Force and Navy projects, but efforts to re-equip its Army vehicle fleets remain on schedule.

Canada's Army is emerging as the clear winner in equipment purchases. It has received approval to spend more than 5 billion Canadian dollars ($4.9 billion) on several new fleets of armored vehicles, while an Air Force program to buy search-and-rescue planes and the Navy's efforts to spend billions on new vessels are in limbo.

The ongoing war in Afghanistan, and the fact that the service has become the main force called on by government for both international and domestic deployments, has bolstered its support, say analysts and officers.

"The Army is the major beneficiary of money available for equipment, largely because of Afghanistan and presumably because of an expectation they'll be called up more in the future for other missions," said defense analyst Martin Shadwick, a strategic studies professor at York University in Toronto.

Shadwick said the Army has been high profile over the last decade. It has been in Afghanistan, and is the first service the Canadian government usually turns to for international missions, as well as domestic deployments to deal with natural disasters such as forest fires and flooding.

Military officers privately agreed with that assessment, noting that although the Air Force has received new aircraft in the last three years, those planes have a transport role that would be used largely to support Army deployments. Canada has purchased and received four C-17s and is receiving the first of its new fleet of C-130Js starting in May.

The Air Force also will receive new Chinook helicopters. In the interim for the Afghanistan mission, it acquired used Chinooks from the U.S. military, again the primary role of the aircraft being to transport Army personnel.

Last July, Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced the Canadian government would spend 5 billion Canadian dollars on the Close Combat Vehicle (CCV) program, the Force Mobility Enhancement program and tactical armored patrol vehicles. He also said that the price included an estimated 1 billion Canadian dollars to upgrade the current fleet of light armored vehicles, known as LAV-3s. Extensive use and the rough Afghanistan terrain have taken their toll on the LAV-3 fleet, he said.

The government has already selected General Dynamics Land Systems Canada, the builder of the LAV-3, as the prime contractor and systems integrator for the upgrade. The project will upgrade 550 vehicles with an option for an additional 80.

One of its key armor programs, the planned CCV purchase, looked as if it would fall victim to fiscal cuts when it was temporarily put on hold in December, but the Defence Department has confirmed the program is once again a priority.

Annie Dicaire, a spokeswoman for the Defence Department's procurement branch, said that a request for proposals for the CCV will be issued in the fall with a contract award expected in the fall of 2011.

The Army purchases come despite government direction that the Canadian Forces will face cutbacks over the next several years as the country tries to get control of a 55 billion Canadian dollar budget deficit.

The Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to cut 2.5 billion Canadian dollars in planned defense spending between 2012 and 2015, a move that could delay a decision on the purchase of new-generation fighter aircraft as well as the building of new ships for the Navy, analysts and opposition-party politicians say.

The Defence Department is already dealing with belt-tightening measures. The military has reduced training for its reserve forces and limited some Air Force flights to free up money to meet more pressing needs, such as purchasing new equipment.

Those efforts, started late last year, are designed to save 423 million Canadian dollars, which will be transferred to priority projects.

In addition to the new armored vehicles, the Army is receiving secondhand Leopard tanks from the Netherlands. It will also acquire new trucks in the next several years.

For the Afghanistan mission, the Army has received heavy armored transport trucks, M777 howitzers and various heavier armored engineering vehicles to deal with improvised explosive devices.

Ready To Roll

Shadwick said one advantage that the Army has over the other two services is that the equipment it needs is readily available, unlike the construction of vessels that can take up to a decade.

"The lead time on acquiring a Close Combat Vehicle is relatively fast compared to purchasing ships or even compared to some Air Force projects," Shadwick said.

Of the proposed new acquisitions, the CCV was seen as the top Army program; the vehicle is intended to bridge the gap between light armored vehicles in the 5- to 20-ton range and heavy armored vehicles, which are more than 45 tons. The Army had planned to purchase 108 of the vehicles with an option of acquiring up to 30 more. They will accompany Leopard tanks into battle.

Alan Williams, the former assistant deputy minister for materiel at the Defence Department, said that the Army projects may indeed be important enough to take precedence over those of the two other services. But Williams said he is troubled by the government's lack of a detailed plan on where exactly the vehicles fit into the country's overall defense strategy.

"Do we need a CCV?" asked Williams. "Maybe, but I think there should be a well-thought-out strategy on how such vehicles contribute to the government's goals."

Still, the Army's new armor projects are all expected to move forward in the fall.

Dicaire said requests for proposals for the tactical armored patrol and Force Mobility Enhancement (FME) vehicles are expected to be released in fall 2010. The FME project will be implemented in two phases, she noted. The first phase includes the acquisition of armored engineer vehicles and armored recovery vehicles, and the second phase tactical mobility implements, including dozer blades, mine plows and mine rollers.

The tactical armored patrol vehicle would replace the Army's existing fleet of RG-31 mine-protected vehicles and the Coyote wheeled light armored vehicles. Besides the initial procurement of 500 vehicles, there is an option for an additional 100. The vehicle will be delivered in reconnaissance and general utility variants.

[buglerbilly]

This next article feeds into the GCV and Tracked versus Wheeled discussion going on elsewhere.............

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Armor, Counterinsurgency, and Future Conflict

Posted by Paul McLeary at 4/19/2010 8:05 AM CDT

“Over the last 9 years of doing irregular warfare we have eviscerated the Armor Corps to the point of its extinction… But what if the American Army has to fight somebody in the future beyond insurgents laying IEDs and small arms ambushes that is usually handled effectively by infantry platoons? What if a heavy Brigade Combat Team in Iraq was told to pick up and head east and do a movement to contact into a threatening country?”

So writes U.S. Army Col. Gian P. Gentile in a recent Small Wars Journal piece laying out his concerns over how the U.S. Army has become too fixated on irregular threats to the detriment of traditional combined arms skills. The debate in many ways mirrors the very messy, and very public fallout that occurred in Israel after its botched invasion of southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006. (The American debate, of course, is absent any sense of real urgency. Israel had just been shocked by the success of Hezbollah and the failures of the IDF in Lebanon, whereas the United States is pulling out of Iraq, and is still very much in the fight in Afghanistan. It’s not yet time for the postmortems.)

After you read Col. Gentile's piece, I suggest you check out another short paper: RAND’s David E. Johnson takes stock of the Israeli response to the war in Lebanon, and what it means for the U.S. Army’s own struggles to define itself for the future in a new monograph, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War: Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza. He writes that the Israeli Defense Forces had such difficulties with the organized and well-trained Hezbollah forces in part because in the preceding years, the IDF focused so much of its training on countering the irregular threat presented by Hamas in Gaza, going so far as to focus “roughly 75 percent of training” on “low intensity conflict” and only 25 percent on combined arms and maneuver—a decision that would have grave consequences in the valleys of southern Lebanon. As a result, by 2006 “the Israeli Army’s almost exclusive focus on LIC [low intensity conflict] resulted in a military that was largely incapable of joint combined arms fire and maneuver.” Specifically, the IDF failed to properly integrate its air, ground, and fires assets when encountering organized Hezbollah units. After these failures in finding, fixing, and defeating a well-supplied enemy organized around small unit actions, the IDF reversed its training ratio to focus more on combined arms tactics, while scaling back on irregular skills.

Johnson says that the Israeli experience in Lebanon in 2006, and then in Gaza in 2009—where the IDF’s return to combined arms training paid off in a more successful military operation—is instructive to a U.S. Army that has also seen some atrophy in combined arms and armor training. He warns that “The U.S. Army, focused as it necessarily is on preparing soldiers and units for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, might be approaching a condition similar to that of the Israelis before the 2006 Second Lebanon War: expert at COIN, but less prepared for sophisticated hybrid opponents.”

And to sum all this up in a way I probably haven't here, check out Judah Grunstein over at World Politics Review on COIN and Hybrid War. This is something we're going to start hearing a lot more about, as it's a fight for the soul of the U.S. Army, and how it prepares itself for near and long-term threats.

[buglerbilly]

The Death of the Armor Corps

Gian P. Gentile

The Armor Corps in the American Army is gone, it is no more.

The Army has become decidedly infantry centric. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was a fighting kind of infantry centered army. But instead it is an infantry centric Army grounded in the principles of population centric counterinsurgency and Rupert Smith's view of war in the future as "wars amongst the people."

To be sure the American Army will be told to do lots of things from winning hearts and minds in the Hindu Kush, to passing out humanitarian relief in the troubled spots around the world, to nation building in Iraq. But first and foremost it must be an Army grounded in combined arms competencies. This must come first, and not second or third after fuzzy concepts as “whole of government approach” and building emotional relationships with local populations. The latter may of course be important, depending on the mission, but those kinds of competencies must be premised on combined arms and not the other way around.
I recently heard an American Army General speak to a group of young men and women soon to become second lieutenants. The General's main point to these young men and women--what they needed to be good at when they went out into the field army--was establishing "trusting relationships" with local populations. One would have liked soon-to-be-lieutenants told that they must be proficient in their basic branch skills: infantry and armor, basic fire and maneuver with their platoon as part of a maneuver company/team; artillery, fire support; logistics, logistical support; and so on.

I have also heard reports from the field that the operational army has Armor (19K) Non Commissioned Officers as high as the rank of Staff Sergeant who have never qualified on a M1 Tank. Too, when was the last time that a heavy Brigade Combat Team has done a combined arms, live fire exercise integrating all arms at Brigade level? Do the Armor, Artillery, and Infantry Branches even have the collective knowledge to know how to do one anymore? My own experience as a Cavalry Squadron Commander returning from a combat deployment in Baghdad a few years ago mirrors these kinds of stories where I had lieutenants who had never qualified on a Bradley and a Squadron that didn’t know collectively anymore how to run a Bradley Gunnery Range. Such skills may seem insignificant but they are not because they indicate the collective knowledge and competency (or lack of it) of a tactical level combined arms formation.

Where to point to in the American Army today as to the location of the Armor Corps? One can easily ask that question about infantry and then point to such places as Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Fort Campbell, or even Afghanistan. But where is the Armor Corps? Fort Hood? Nope. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment recently gave up its tanks; a heavy BCT from 4ID is currently in Afghanistan doing infantry operations and they left their Tanks and Bradleys behind.

So it is gone, over the last 9 years of doing irregular warfare we have eviscerated the Armor Corps to the point of its extinction. Maybe the cost was worth it and maybe it doesn’t matter if the visionaries of the future are right when they tell us not to worry about combined arms competencies since those kinds of things are easy and what the American Army really needs to get to—a higher form of war and conflict as it is often implied—is “whole of government approach.”

I am sure some folks have no problem with this situation since they see the future full of more Iraqs and Afghanistans and irregular warfare. But what if the American Army has to fight somebody in the future beyond insurgents laying IEDs and small arms ambushes that is usually handled effectively by infantry platoons? What if a heavy Brigade Combat Team in Iraq was told to pick up and head east and do a movement to contact into a threatening country?

Could we do it? It would be hard to do such an operation without the intellectual framework of an Armored Force that the American Army used to have, but of late has gone away. It will be hard, very hard to get it back. Competent field armies, skilled in all-arms warfare, are not made overnight.

The author is a serving Army Colonel. The views in this article are his own and not those of the Department of Defense.

[Raven22]

I have also heard reports from the field that the operational army has Armor (19K) Non Commissioned Officers as high as the rank of Staff Sergeant who have never qualified on a M1 Tank. Too, when was the last time that a heavy Brigade Combat Team has done a combined arms, live fire exercise integrating all arms at Brigade level? Do the Armor, Artillery, and Infantry Branches even have the collective knowledge to know how to do one anymore? My own experience as a Cavalry Squadron Commander returning from a combat deployment in Baghdad a few years ago mirrors these kinds of stories where I had lieutenants who had never qualified on a Bradley and a Squadron that didn’t know collectively anymore how to run a Bradley Gunnery Range. Such skills may seem insignificant but they are not because they indicate the collective knowledge and competency (or lack of it) of a tactical level combined arms formation.

Sounds remarkably like our own Army in 2008.

[buglerbilly]

GD-Lockheed-Raytheon-MTU Team To Bid on GCV

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 28 Apr 2010 16:08

General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, MTU and Raytheon plan on working together to bid for the U.S. Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, according to a job listing posted online April 25 by Lockheed Martin.


U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli laid out GCV guidelines at a 2009 industry day. (U.S. Army)

According to the job listing, which sought an engineering senior manager for the GCV program, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control is part of a team that also includes General Dynamics Land Systems, General Dynamics C4 Systems, Raytheon and MTU.

Lockheed will build the turret, the listing said.

The job listing was removed soon after the Lockheed and GD press offices were asked about it.

Lockheed officials declined to comment. GD officials were unable to comment by press time.

The Army's GCV effort is replacing the Future Combat Systems vehicle program. The service, which intends to award up to three contracts for a 27-month technology development phase, released a request for proposals Feb. 25. The bidding deadline is May 21; awards are expected in September.

BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman announced in March that they will team up to bid.

Details on other industry teams are still emerging.

"Boeing is determining the best way forward to provide value and a balanced [infantry fight vehicle] design to the Army as part of its Ground Combat Vehicle Modernization program," said a Boeing spokeswoman in an April 28 e-mail. "We will leverage core competencies derived from a legacy of complex systems development programs and seven years of work in support of Army Modernization efforts to address complex ground vehicle requirements and deliver a superior vehicle solution that will increase troop safety, survivability, lethality and mission effectiveness."

The Army wants the new vehicle to be more survivable than a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, as tough against fire as a Bradley fighting vehicle, as mobile as an Abrams tank and more lethal than a Bradley.

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Is the Army Leaning Toward a Tracked Ground Combat Vehicle?

Posted by Paul McLeary at 4/30/2010 7:00 AM CDT


U.S. Army rendering of a possible (tracked) Ground Combat Vehicle design

This early in its development, the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle is still much closer to being a grab bag of wants, needs, and concepts than it is to being an actual operational reality. The current schedule calls for 2-3 competitors to be chosen in late 2010 to fight it out for the right to design the vehicle, with an infantry carrier variant to be produced by Fiscal 2017. While the Army just issued its latest request for proposals late last week, Army brass has been dropping hints over the past several months that they might be leaning toward a tracked vehicle for the GCV design, as opposed to the wheeled MRAP, M-ATV and Stryker combat vehicles it has been buying over the last decade.

After delivering his remarks about Army modernization at a breakfast meeting in Virginia on Thursday morning—where the biscuits and gravy were, as always, superb—Lt. Gen. Robert Lennox from the Army’s G-8 department added more fuel to the fire, telling ARES during a question and answer session that the Army indeed seems to be leaning toward tracks.

Reflecting lessons learned from the Future Combat Systems fiasco, the GCV has no weight requirement—but it does have requirements for survivability and maneuverability. Back in March, an Army spokesman told me that the service wants the vehicle to have the “urban mobility of a Stryker, with the off-road capability of a Bradley and the survivability of an MRAP. The mobility requirements are as important as survivability, because you can’t make your battlefield commander’s movements predictable. You can’t limit his routes; you’ve got to be able to go in various terrain.”

Given all that, Lennox admitted that “as you start asking what you want the vehicle to do in terms of survivability, weight is a factor; [when it comes to] the number of people that it carries weight is a factor; do you want a turret on top, weight is a factor—and those kind of attributes drive you to I think a tracked vehicle.” He was quick to add that “none of this is preordained, so I don’t mean to say that if you come in with a different solution that it won’t be considered…but I think that’s the thought that it drives you to that kind of [tracked] solution.”

Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center seemed to come to pretty much the same conclusion last October when we spoke about the GCV’s possible weight. He admitted that above a certain weight a vehicle’s mobility is hampered, and that “there will be a weight inflection point that will then require a tracked vehicle.” He suggested that there might be multiple variants of the GCV, and that “some could be tracked, some could be wheeled.”

The Army’s new appreciation for tracked vehicles likely stems from a combination of the need to replace its rapidly aging Bradley fleet and the harsh—and expensive—lessons currently being learned in the rugged, track-friendly terrain of Afghanistan. Our Canadian neighbors, who have learned their own Afghan lessons, seem to be coming to much the same conclusion as they undertake a $5 billion reset of its ground vehicle fleet. Reports have it that the government of Canada is taking a hard look at the tracked CV90 infantry carrier for its Close Combat Vehicle requirement, (Canada is planning on buying about 100 – 150 CCVs) and is watching closely how several European allies, including Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Holland and Denmark are employing the vehicle in Afghanistan.

[buglerbilly]

Experts Study U.S. Army's GCV Plans, Schedule

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 10 May 2010 16:50

A joint initiative between the U.S. Army and the Office of the Secretary of Defense is examining the acquisition plans and timeline for the service's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), an effort that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he'd like to accelerate.

A GCV red team was formed in the last month to assess the Army's procurement plans for the new program, said Paul Mehney, spokesman for the Program Executive Office (PEO) for Integration. The group is made up of experts in engineering, acquisition and program management, from inside and outside the Defense Department and the Army, he said.

Speaking this weekend to an audience at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Gates said "we can shave a little time off" the GCV schedule and cited the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program, which went from an idea to full-rate production "in a year."

Under the current schedule, the first prototype would be ready at the beginning of fiscal year 2015 and the first production vehicle in fiscal 2017.

"This red team is out there taking a look at this schedule and whether that's a realistic schedule to meet," Mehney said.

Simultaneously, the Army is conducting an analysis of alternative capabilities that may fit the GCV requirements.

While the red team will look at that, they are more focused "on programmatic risk and executability as far as the schedule and acquisition process are concerned," Mehney said. The team will consider all phases of the GCV program, but the primary focus will be on the technology demonstration phase, he added.

Specifically, the team is going to assess "the acquisition strategy and critical path for schedule realism, given the current set of requirements," he said.

The team also will identify technological and integration risks and recommend potential mitigation, he said.

The red team will also look at cost and affordability, as well as make recommendations "for adjustments in the requirements scope if needed," Mehney said.

The team was formed in late April and its findings are expected in June ahead of a Milestone A decision and the technology development source-selection process, Mehney said.

"The program manager for Ground Combat Vehicle and PEO Integration is working very closely with the group to make sure that their needs are met, their questions are answered and to provide any clarification on issues that come up where it's appropriate," he said. "It's a very close working relationship."

The Army's GCV effort is replacing the Future Combat Systems vehicle program. The service, which intends to award up to three contracts for a 27-month technology development phase, released a request for proposals Feb. 25. The bidding deadline is May 21; awards are expected in September.

[buglerbilly]

House Authorizers Have Concerns About U.S. Army GCV

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 12 May 2010 19:00

While the House Armed Services air and land forces subcommittee fully funds the U.S. Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program in its markup of the 2011 defense authorization bill, it is concerned about the vehicle's requirements, which it sees as "extremely ambitious" in some areas, according to congressional documents.

The subcommittee provides the $934.4 million requested by the Army to fund research and development for the new vehicle in 2011.

In a report accompanying its budget markup, the subcommittee expresses its support for the initial acquisition strategy for the GCV program, saying it "appears to be more disciplined, and focused on producing a single variant of a new ground combat vehicle with a design flexible enough to accommodate future upgrades."

Army officials have said that for GCV, the service plans to follow Defense Department acquisition-reform guidelines that call for more extensive testing through the use of competitive prototypes.

The committee supports the idea of maintaining competition throughout the technology development, and the engineering and manufacturing development phases.

"However, the committee is concerned with some of the requirements in place for the GCV, which the committee believes are extremely ambitious in some areas," the report reads. "The committee is concerned that, once again, the Army may be asking the defense industry to build a 'gold-plated' vehicle that may take longer to develop than planned and prove to be extremely expensive to procure."

The Army has said it wants the new infantry carrier to have the survivability of a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, the lethality of a Bradley fighting vehicle and the maneuverability of a Stryker.

"The committee believes the Army must carefully review the requirements for the GCV program and consider a more incremental approach that separates 'needs' from 'wants.' "

The committee supports the program's focus on vehicle and crew survivability, but is worried that other requirements, while desired, may prove "too costly and complex."

Citing the inclusion of "non-lethal weapons, the ability to intercept direct and indirect fire threats, aggressive fuel efficiency improvements, and the ability to defeat heavily armored vehicles at extended range," the committee says that requiring these capabilities in the initial GCV model "could needlessly complicate the vehicle's design, and could be included as incremental upgrades at a later time."

The committee also recommends the Army, in its analysis of alternatives, "carefully consider whether or not it is possible to upgrade current vehicles, including some foreign designs, to meet baseline GCV requirements on an accelerated schedule that could get a vehicle in the hands of troops more quickly than the current seven-year timeline."

This echoes remarks from Defense Secretary Robert Gates this past weekend at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he said he'd like to see some time shaved off of the GCV schedule.

The Army's GCV effort is replacing the Future Combat Systems vehicle program, canceled last year by Gates.

[buglerbilly]

Chiarelli Responds to Critics of GCV's Weight

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 20 May 2010 20:08

FORT KNOX, Ky. - Two days before industry proposals were due, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, provided new details about the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, saying the new vehicle could weigh up to 70 tons, but only if the threat environment required it.

"We're looking at a vehicle that ranges in weight between 50 and 70 tons," Chiarelli said May 19 at the Army's armor conference.

He said he's been involved in some heated discussions lately about the GCV and the debate "always comes down to the weight of the vehicle."

Critics point out that at 70 tons, the GCV would be the heaviest infantry fighting vehicle in existence and as heavy as the Abrams tank. Chiarelli said the extra weight in armor protection would be used only when needed.

"We're not talking about a 70-ton vehicle, we're talking about a 70-ton vehicle when we need it," Chiarelli said.

The Army has rolled four big ideas into its plans for the new vehicle effort, he said. First, the Army wants it fielded in seven years.

"That's absolutely critical to the chief and to [Defense Secretary Robert Gates]," Chiarelli said.

The Army also wants it to be a full-spectrum vehicle, meaning it can work in major combat operations and, at the other end of the spectrum, humanitarian assistance missions.

At a minimum, "at its lightest weight," the vehicle has to provide MRAP-like protection, Chiarelli said. And, finally, it has to carry 12 soldiers.

Fitting 12 soldiers into a vehicle with MRAP-like protection using today's technology means the vehicle is going to weigh at least 50 tons, Chiarelli said. "That is the state of technology today."

In five or 10 years, lighter armor composites may become available, but "you're not going to get it in seven years," he added. "I envision the first one that comes out will weigh more than the one that comes out 10 years later," the vice chief said.

Its weight will depend on what level of armor is needed given the threat environment. At a minimum, it would have the protection of an MRAP, but scalable armor packages, including protection against explosively formed penetrators, could be added as threats change, Chiarelli said.

"Will we buy the 70-ton package for every single vehicle of GCV? Probably not," he said.

As for wheels or tracks, the Army did not specify in its request for proposals, "but I haven't seen anything yet wheeled that can handle that kind of weight," the vice chief said.

Industry teams must submit their proposals by May 21, after which the Army will enter the source-selection process.

During his presentation, Chiarelli showed an image of the GCV that looked a lot like a Bradley fighting vehicle, which the GCV will replace.

"If you look at this artist's rendition, it looks a hell of a lot like a Bradley," Chiarelli said. This doesn't mean it necessarily will, though. "We have to see what industry brings back to see what it's going to look like," he said.

[buglerbilly]

This is an image issued in March this year. Not sure if it is the same as issued yesterday?

[buglerbilly]

Related to this program but also to all other Armoured areas is the following...........

Survivability Ideas Eyed At U.S. Armor Conference

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 20 May 2010 17:15

FORT KNOX, Ky. - Vehicle survivability improvements, particularly protection against sniper fire and rocket-propelled grenades, were drawing attention at the U.S. Army armor conference here.

Raytheon and its subsidiary BBN Technologies showed a Boomerang shooter detection system paired with the Long-Range Advance Scout Surveillance System (LRAS3) - the first time these two systems, currently in use by the Army, have been paired up.

Boomerang, using audio detection, can provide the clock direction from which small arms fire is coming. LRAS3 gives the gunner a visual clue as to where the shooter is and also provides the elevation, helpful if the sniper is on the fifth floor of a building, for example. By pairing the systems, a soldier can stay inside the vehicle after Boomerang locates the general direction of the shooter, letting LRAS3 hone in on where exactly the shooter is.

This could reduce the time it takes to return fire, said Sgt. 1st Class Clifford Jackson, a combat developer in the maneuver requirements division at the Maneuver Center of Excellence. Jackson provided a tour of the exhibitors' area here.

"Survivability is the name of the game," he said. "One of the goals of the armor conference is to show new technologies that will enhance battlefield survivability and situational awareness."

Textron showed one of its Armored Security Vehicles equipped with an outside airbag intended to fend off rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Textron calls it the Tactical Rocket-Propelled Grenade Airbag Protection System, or TRAPS. The airbag is contained within a rectangular box outside of the vehicle.

A Stryker vehicle fully equipped with slat armor to protect against RPGs was also parked nearby. Jackson said he'd also seen the mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle's solution to the RPG problem, calling it "very interesting." Resembling a cargo net with metal nuts spaced an inch or so apart, it aims to offer the same protection as the Stryker's slat armor.

Why CROWS Is 'A Big Draw'

The Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS) continues to get a lot of attention as it allows soldiers to operate the vehicle's gun system while under armor.

"CROWS is a big draw, because survivability is huge in our contemporary operating environment," said Jackson.

The Abrams tank just started testing with the Stabilized Commander's Weapon Station a couple of weeks ago, he said.

Also on display was a thermal camera that could be mounted onto the back of a vehicle, allowing the driver to see what's going on while backing up or before lowering the hatch. It is already on MRAPs and is being added to older vehicles, said Jackson.

Individual gear also drew plenty of eyes here.

Mounted Soldier System items on display included a heads-up display, microclimate cooling vests, body armor plates, fire-resistant clothing for extreme cold weather and cordless communications.

"Cordless communications is a big thing with mounted soldiers because very often soldiers will be executing their duties in the vehicle and become disconnected from communications with everybody, both inside and outside the vehicle," said Jackson.

The Mounted Soldier System's cordless communications alerts the soldier that he's been disconnected while maintaining communications with crew members through a radio.

The Maneuver Center is also interested in moving toward scalable body armor for mounted soldiers. Inside a tank, space is tight and individual body armor isn't needed, but when a soldier leaves the vehicle, ideally he should be able to throw on the necessary armor quickly, said Jackson.

Right now, soldiers wear their full kits inside armored vehicles.

[Ecky]

Source: Shepard (http://www.shephard.co.uk/news/landwarfareint/gcv-shortlist-revealed/6378/)


May 21, 2010
Contenders for the technology development (TD) phase of the US Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) programme have been confirmed as the Request for Proposals (RfP) reached its deadline today.

Despite the US Army being unable to comment on the final shortlist due to ‘federal regulations governing source selection’, LWI can confirm that there are at least three consortiums bidding for the contract.

General Dynamics has confirmed that it has teamed up with Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Company and MTU Detroit Diesel while other contenders include a BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman teaming agreement, which was announced on 2 March; and a SAIC-led consortium which includes Boeing, Krauss Maffei Wegman and Rheinmetall Defence Systems.

With Northrop Grumman providing C4ISR elements, BAE Systems told LWI that its offering would comprise an ‘integrated electronic network capability and embedded intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to connect warfighters’.

Meanwhile, General Dynamics said its design drew on ‘mature technologies to provide survivability, soldier capacity, network interoperability, mobility and lethality that is unmatched by any existing ground combat vehicle’. Lockheed Martin will design the turret while Raytheon will concentrate on sensor integration. MTU Detroit Diesel will be responsible for the propulsion system.
Finally, the SAIC-led consortium will offer a variation of the KMW and Rheinmetall Puma IFV with Boeing providing mission systems capabilities and lethal and non-lethal precision engagement systems.

Industry sources also suggested that Oshkosh trucks, Force Protection, Navistar and AM General could also be interested in the programme. However, none of these companies was available to comment on whether they were involved in any separate bids.
Parties now have a 27-month period in which to test and mature subcomponents and other material elements of the designs prior to a Milestone B decision in FY 2013. The subsequent Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase would run through the first quarter of FY 2016, and include delivery of the first prototype vehicle in FY 2015.

Initiated on 25 February, the RfP was delayed by 25 days in order to allow industry more time to provide the most ‘robust’ solutions for its next-generation of IFVs.

Requirements include a system capable of transporting an infantry squad with the protection of a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle or above; and increased off-road mobility compared to Bradley IFVs and Stryker infantry carrier vehicles. A tracked vehicle is also expected, according to industry’s interpretation of these requirements.

The winning vehicle will also comprise a modular armour solution and be transportable by C-17 and rail. The army would not comment on a gross vehicle weight and the spokesman said it would wait to see what technical solutions for survivability and transportability industry would put forward.
Andrew White, London

From GD press release sourced here (http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/40243)

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich., May 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A team led by General Dynamics (NYSE: GD) that includes Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) and MTU Detroit Diesel today submitted its proposal for the Technology Development (TD) phase of the U.S. Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program.

"The General Dynamics team's design is grounded in a focus on Soldier survivability and operational effectiveness. Our design draws on mature technologies to provide survivability, Soldier capacity, network interoperability, mobility and lethality that is unmatched by any existing ground combat vehicle," said Donald Kotchman, senior program director for General Dynamics Land Systems.

"Our design approach capitalizes on the proven ability and competence of each team member to meet the requirements for a completely integrated next-generation fighting system," Kotchman said. "We explored more than one million potential design options using a trade-optimizing process to determine our Ground Combat Vehicle Infantry Fighting Vehicle point of departure."

General Dynamics assembled a best-in-class team with unmatched Heavy Brigade Combat Team experience that is involved in the development, integration or sustainment of over 70 percent of today's fleet of combat vehicles and weapons systems. Each team member brings unrivaled program management experience, systems engineering and technical expertise to the team. Together, the team provides an unmatched legacy of performance on contemporary ground combat vehicles.

"Our design concept was selected to provide Soldiers the comfort, connectivity, survivability, lethality and growth potential necessary to adapt to the fluid conditions of a contemporary battlefield and address the spectrum of operations from hybrid/irregular warfare to conventional warfare," Kotchman said.

The purpose of the 27-month GCV TD phase is to complete the preliminary design, mature technologies through subsystem demonstrators, and inform the requirements process for an Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) that meets the Army's requirements for operations in a contemporary threat environment.

With more than 70 years of ground combat vehicle design, development, integration and sustainment experience, General Dynamics Land Systems leads the team as the prime contractor and has overall responsibility for program management, vehicle design and integration. General Dynamics also is responsible for Soldier interfaces, vehicle structure and chassis, squad and crew environments, integrated survivability and safety, and distributed systems.

Lockheed Martin has responsibility for the turret, lethal and non-lethal effects, Soldier health management and embedded training. The company offers over 50 years of experience in systems integration and is the world leader in design and development of missiles and fire control systems.

Raytheon was selected as the hit-avoidance system, indirect-vision and sensor integrator. The company brings more than 40 years of combat sensor and systems integration experience in providing advanced situational awareness, target engagement and force protection capabilities for a variety of ground combat vehicles.

MTU Detroit Diesel has responsibility for the propulsion system. It is the premier provider of high-capacity diesel propulsion systems, with proven integration experience in modern combat systems worldwide.

With responsibility for network integration, communications, data management, common computing and information assurance, General Dynamics C4 Systems leads the network integration integrated product team. General Dynamics C4 Systems bring over 50 years of experience in the development of the some of the world's most advanced command, control, communications and computing systems.

General Dynamics, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., employs approximately 91,200 people worldwide. The company is a market leader in business aviation; land and expeditionary combat systems, armaments and munitions; shipbuilding and marine systems; and information systems and technologies. More information about General Dynamics is available online at www.generaldynamics.com .

SOURCE General Dynamics

[Weasel]

SAIC-led consortium which includes Boeing, Krauss Maffei Wegman and Rheinmetall Defence Systems.

Da what?!!

If I remember correctly wasn't SAIC and (for that matter) Boeing the people behind the discredited FCS program? How are they going to be able to "improve" on the Puma design?

cheers

w

[buglerbilly]

Da what?!!

If I remember correctly wasn't SAIC and (for that matter) Boeing the people behind the discredited FCS program? How are they going to be able to "improve" on the Puma design?

cheers

w

Cosmetic lip-service to make sure its an "American" design, perhaps they'll make the hydro-pneumatic suspension bounce to Rap "music"..............?

[Gubler, A.]

SAIC and Boeing will just fit a BMS to the Puma. The same thing they were doing for the GDLS and BAES vehicles in FCS. The big question for the Puma is how are they going to increase the under armour volume to fit the US Army requirement. A higher roof, an extra road wheel?

[buglerbilly]

KMW and Rheinmetall join forces with SAIC and Boeing in bid for the US Army’s ground combat vehicle programme


The proven Puma vehicle (picture) will be the technological basis for the development of the GCV.

10:21 GMT, May 25, 2010 Düsseldorf/Munich (Germany) | Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) have concluded a cooperation agreement with the American companies Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Boeing in order to tender a joint bid for the development contract for the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) programme of the United States Army.

This cooperation will see Rheinmetall and KMW acting as subcontractors to Boeing, with SAIC acting as the general contractor with regard to the procuring agencies.

As the manufacturers of the Puma infantry fighting vehicle of the German Armed Forces, the most modern system of its kind in the world, Rheinmetall and KMW will be contributing their highly advanced expertise to this transatlantic team.

The objective of the cooperation is to provide the American Army with absolute state-of-the-art technology, which characterizes the Puma.

The team will be bidding for the contract for the first of four phases to the GCV programme. In this development phase, the U.S. Army intends to award up to three contracts to different tendering companies, before drawing up a short list in subsequent steps for the actual solution to be realised.

The Puma, which Rheinmetall and KMW have jointly developed for the German Armed Forces and will be delivering from late-2010, offers the series maturity expected by the U.S. Army. In virtually every category the Puma already satisfies the technical requirements of the GCV programme, even exceeding these significantly in key areas.

In addition the system will be further developed for the United States Army to accommodate a total crew size of three, plus nine soldiers, a 40mm gun and weigh a total of around 50 tons. With its high level of protection, its mobility and outstanding mission capability, this GCV response will – in the same way as the performance features of the Puma – also set new standards. Furthermore, the vehicles will be built in the United States.

[Weasel]

SAIC and Boeing will just fit a BMS to the Puma. The same thing they were doing for the GDLS and BAES vehicles in FCS. The big question for the Puma is how are they going to increase the under armour volume to fit the US Army requirement. A higher roof, an extra road wheel?

Ok... How many road wheels does it have today? "Jake's law" says you can't go over 7. Well, you can but its not a good idea as you tend to throw the track in a turn.

cheers


w

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Team Full Spectrum and what they didn't say about the CGVP

Posted by Christina Mackenzie at 6/15/2010 9:50 AM CDT

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Full Spectrum teammates The Boeing Company, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall are bidding for the US Ground Combat Vehicle Program and called a press conference at Eurosatory to tell us about it. But anyone expecting to learn a few more concrete details about this rather vague program came away disappointed, not only because the US army requirement has been left vague but the team said that as this was a competition they couldn't tell us too much about their bid in case the other teams get wind of it. I actually wonder why they bothered holding a press conference at all.

But anyway, here's what I can tell you. There are four teams bidding for this contract: apart from Team Full Spectrum there is one led by General Dynamics, one led by BAE Systems and one which is a small business but from where and who it is nobody could say. Team Full Spectrum put in its proposal on May 21 and Jed Dunbar, SAIC vice president, told us that up to three development contracts could be awarded in September. Twenty seven months later there is expected to be a down selection of two. These two teams will then build six prototypes each and the 12 will then undergo side-by-side testing. “We expect there to be a down selection [of the winner] in about five years,” Dunbar said.

The army is believed to want 1,200 vehicles to be built over eight years.

“Our mantra, the underlying imperatives are that the vehicle protects, empowers and unburdens,” Dunbar said hinting that the design will be “informed by lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The speakers – apart from Dunbar they were Steve Marion, senior program director, Boeing Network & Tactical Systems, Dr Thomas Kauffmann, KMW senior vice president sales & marketing and Andreas Riedel, general manager Rheinmetall Landsysteme -- also said the vehicle would be a US vehicle, would use the design legacy of the Puma turret and suggested that as an overall design the “Puma is a good starting point.”

The vehicle will probably weigh between 50 to 70 tons, it must carry three crew plus nine dismounts. At that size it is likely to be a tracked vehicle although the latter point has not been specified by the army. So, with this information in hand I challenge you to try and draw the vehicle!

[Ecky]

This makes the GCV competition interesting - a hybrid powerpack.
I thought the technology was too immature for a 50 ton ground vehicle.

Source: National Journal (http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/2010/06/bae-offers-hybridelectric.php)


Wednesday, June 16, 2010 8:20 AM



BAE Offers Hybrid-Electric Combat Vehicle
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

BAE Systems will "definitely" use a hybrid-electric engine for its contender in the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle competition, the company's GCV general manager, Mark Signorelli, told National Journal Tuesday.

Going hybrid is a high-tech gamble that sets BAE apart from its competitors. The U.S.-German team led by SAIC Corp. confirmed that it would use a conventional diesel. The leader of the third team, General Dynamics, did not respond by press time, but its subcontractor MTU Detroit Diesel, which has offered military-grade hybrid-electric motors in the past, told National Journal it was providing a straight diesel for the GCV.

Hybrid-electric drive had been a major feature of the GCV's predecessor program, the Future Combat Systems (FCS) Manned Ground Vehicle, which was being jointly developed by BAE and General Dynamics before it was canceled last year by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. But when Gates and the Army rebooted the effort (subscription) as the Ground Combat Vehicle, they explicitly abandoned many of the high-tech ambitions of FCS in favor of more traditional technology.

One fundamental change is much heavier armor: The FCS design grew from less than 20 tons to nearly 30 before it was canceled; BAE's GCV weighs in at 50 tons but can layer on additional armor up to 70 tons. One expert on the program told National Journal he doubted hybrid-electric drives could scale up from the lighter FCS to the heavier GCV without unacceptable sacrifices in maneuverability.

BAE's Signorelli disagreed. "You'll get the same kind of acceleration and dash speed" from his company's hybrid diesel-electric engine, he promised, as from even the gas-guzzling high-performance turbine on the M1 Abrams tank. At low speeds and in tight quarters -- say in city fighting -- an electric drive is actually more responsive and maneuverable than a conventional diesel, he said.

Nor is hybrid drive an unproven technology in heavy vehicles, Signorelli argued. "The underlying technology of electric drive motors is very mature," he said. "Locomotives all are diesel-electric systems, and most of our heavy construction equipment" -- the backhoe, for example -- "is diesel-electric."

If BAE can deliver the horsepower with a hybrid GCV, it will salvage one of the major attractions of the canceled FCS vehicles: the ability to generate immense electrical power for high-tech sensors, communications, and, potentially, futuristic weapons. The M1 tank generates 18 kilowatts of power; some diesel-engine vehicles now in development would offer 125 kw; but the hybrid-electric FCS vehicle would have generated 420 kw.

[Gubler, A.]

Ok... How many road wheels does it have today? "Jake's law" says you can't go over 7. Well, you can but its not a good idea as you tend to throw the track in a turn.

The standard Puma has six roadwheels per side. Another way of increasing internal volume would be to re-route the exhaust (clearing one sponsoon) and putting the air-con and batteries into external boxes (clearing the other sponsoon). If they do that then they won't have to sacrifice two dismount seats for storage boxes. That way they can keep the standard six roadwheel hull and carry 11-12 people under armour.

[Gubler, A.]

This makes the GCV competition interesting - a hybrid powerpack.
I thought the technology was too immature for a 50 ton ground vehicle.

If people think the GCV is different to the MGV they haven't looked at the RFP kit provided by the US Army. And in particular the BoK [Body of Knowledge] provided to RFPers from the MGV program. The only real difference is the GCV needs more underbelly protection, doesn't have to be a multi-role vehicle system and is a competitve not collaborative program.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army Chief Of Staff Wants Lighter GCV

By MATTHEW COX

Published: 20 Jun 2010 12:10

The U.S. Army's chief of staff wants to put the service's Ground Combat Vehicle program on a diet.


The proposed Ground Combat Vehicle would replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, above. (U.S. AIR FORCE)

Gen. George Casey said he thinks the future replacement for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle needs to be much lighter than the estimated 70 tons program officials are projecting that the new GCV will weigh.

"I keep saying, 'Look, man, an MRAP [mine-resistant ambush-protected] is about 23 tons, and you're telling me this is going to be 70 tons, which is the same as an [M1] Abrams. Surely we can get a level of protection between that, that is closer to the MRAP than it is the M1,' " Casey said June 7. "It's not going to be a super heavyweight vehicle."

Casey's comments come less than a month after Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said at the Armor Conference at Fort Knox, Ky., that the GCV would weigh 50 to 70 tons.

Critics point out that a 70-ton GCV would be the world's heaviest infantry fighting vehicle. By contrast, the heaviest vehicle for the Marine Corps is the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an amphibious armored personnel carrier. Still in development, it is expected to weigh 38 tons.

The Bradley can weigh up to 36 tons.

Defense firms submitted their proposals for the first phase of the GCV in late May. Program officials expect to award up to three contracts for the technology development phase in September.

The Army launched the GCV program in April 2009 as part of a larger Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization program, formerly known as Future Combat Systems.

The effort stood up quickly after a decision by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to kill the Manned Ground Vehicles portion of the Army's FCS program in the fiscal 2010 defense budget. Gates spared the high-tech communications network and the spin-out technologies slated for fielding in 2011, but canceled the program's family of 27-ton MGVs, criticizing the design as ill-suited to survive current battlefield threats.

The Army wants the GCV to have the underbelly armor of the MRAP, better side protection than the Bradley, some type of automatic cannon and an anti-tank missile system.

The V-shaped hull on the MRAP allows the vehicle to withstand blasts from roadside bombs and protect soldiers inside. The Bradley has side armor that can stop 20mm and other potent calibers. Newer Stryker vehicles can stop 14.5mm projectiles.

Officials want the GCV to perform well in open country, on roads and in urban areas.

Army officials stress the importance of the GCV since the service continues to rely on its fleet of 16,000 combat vehicles on a battlefield dominated by powerful improvised explosive devices.

"The Ground Combat Vehicle is going to be the first vehicle designed to operate in the environments that we're operating in today, particularly in IED environments," Casey said. "None of the vehicles that we have now, except possibly the MRAPs, are designed for that. ... With the Bradley and the tank, they started back in the late 60s and early 70s, and they have been great, but as we built out the Bradley, it's at the limits of size, weight and power."

The Bradley can carry up to seven infantrymen in addition to a commander, gunner and driver.

The GCV is being designed to carry a complete nine-man infantry squad and a three-man crew and provide them with MRAP-like protection - that's at least 50 tons using today's technology, Chiarelli said at the Armor Conference.

But Casey said that soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have told him that big, heavy vehicles just aren't practical in urban combat.

"They'll tell you, we stopped using tanks and Bradleys on the streets of Baghdad just because of the size," Casey said. "We have to work the tradeoffs between protection and size."

As for wheels or tracks, the Army did not specify in its request for proposals, but Chiarelli and other senior Army officials have said the GCV would likely have to be tracked based on the current weight projection.

For now, the plan is to ensure that the new vehicle can be transported by C-17 aircraft, rail and ship. An Army "analysis of alternatives" will attempt to provide some type of recommendation sometime this summer.

It is unusual for an analysis of alternatives to be done in parallel with the request for proposals process, but Army officials have said it's being done that way to save time.

Army officials have said the five- to seven-year development timeline is in place to follow Pentagon acquisition-reform guidelines that call for more testing and competitive prototypes. The decision to build a new vehicle or buy a current design will be up to the Defense Department.

Casey said the Army has the time to work through these issues. The service aims to have a prototype in hand by 2015, and field the new infantry fighting vehicle in 2017.

"We're at the beginning of the process," Casey said. "This thing is going to take about seven years to get on the street."

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army GCV Protest Not Expected to Cause Delay

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 23 Jun 2010 17:13

It is unlikely that a protest filed by a relatively unknown small company will delay the U.S. Army's plans to award contracts this September for its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, according to sources.

After its GCV proposal was rejected, Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on June 18, according to the GAO bid protest docket. InsideDefense.com first reported the protest on June 22.

"ADVS, a small business concern located in Lake Orion, Michigan, submitted a proposal that offered proven technology developed by ADVS and its subcontractors that would provide the Army with an innovative, maneuverable vehicle offering an extraordinary level of crew protection," company officials said in a June 22 press release confirming the protest.

According to the GAO's website, a decision on the matter will be made by Sept. 27. The Army's source selection board can continue its work in the meantime, but it cannot issue contract awards until the protest is resolved, according to a defense source.

Program officials have stated they intend to award up to three contracts in September for the technology development phase of the program. This protest could slightly delay those plans, but it is not expected to set the program back considerably, the source said.

"Early protests for the Army are a blessing as they clear the decks for a clean announcement once the final selections are made," an industry official said.

Defense companies submitted their proposals for the first phase of GCV in late May. Three industry teams announced their bid submissions, while rumors of a fourth team began to surface.

There was speculation that Textron Land Systems might team and offer a vehicle, but a Textron spokeswoman confirmed the company is not bidding on the program. Last week at the Eurosatory show, industry sources identified ADVS as the fourth bidder; however, it remained unclear if the Army had accepted the company's submission.

According to an industry source, the ADVS proposal was rejected because it was "non-compliant" with the Army's requirements.

While the request for proposals did not indicate a specific type of vehicle, Army officials have said that most likely the vehicle would need to be tracked to handle the level of armor protection required. The source said the company had proposed a wheeled vehicle that was not sufficient for the vehicle's mission profile or anticipated payload.

The ADVS press release notes the Army's solicitation said it would consider small business participation, as well as program design, cost and past performance, as evaluation factors in its source selection.

"The Army also stated that it would consider as a supervening factor whether a proposal offered 'technical diversity,' meaning that the proposal offered a different technical approach than other proposals," the release says.

ADVS was founded in 2007 and at that time had 35 employees, a company spokeswoman said. While an online business profile says the company has annual revenue of $40 million, the spokeswoman said, "ADVS is a privately held company and has never, nor will we ever, make annual sales information public."

"We build highly specialized vehicles for very specific purposes, which most often most people will never see," said James Leblanc, the company's CEO at a public hearing in September 2008, according to the Lake Orion Review, a local paper. "They're used before actions take place, hopefully so bigger military actions don't have to take place."

The company received $5 million in the 2009 defense budget "for the development of an advanced armoring system for tactical wheeled vehicles," according to the website of Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

"There is an ever growing need for a modular, scalable and tailorable armor system for tactical wheeled vehicles that is capable of protecting against current and future threats including underbody and side blasts, improvised explosive devices, and explosively formed penetrators," the press release reads, adding that ADVS has particular expertise in this area.

According to an industry source, Leblanc has been working on an infantry fighting vehicle "with a unique drive/propulsion/suspension/armoring system."

"ADVS explained in its protest the reasons why the Army should proceed with the evaluation of proposals, including the proposal submitted by ADVS," the company's statement says.

[Gubler, A.]

[There was speculation that Textron Land Systems might team and offer a vehicle, but a Textron spokeswoman confirmed the company is not bidding on the program.

Which is perfectly understandable but a great shame. Textron is in deep discussions with the Israeli MoD to manage production of Namer APC and perhaps even Merkava tanks in the USA for the IDF. If this program had started a year or two ago they would be in a position to offer a US Namer for GCV. However since at this stage the GCV is just technology development awards Textron with the Namer could come back in at a later date to compete with the new and evolved vehicles.

[buglerbilly]

BAE: Hybrid-Electric Design Will Pay Off in U.S. Army GCV program

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 26 Jul 2010 18:35

Officials from BAE Systems say using hybrid-electric drive technology for the U.S. Army Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program is a risk they think will pay dividends in the long run.

BAE teamed up with Northrop Grumman to bid on the multibillion-dollar vehicle-development program. The first iteration of GCV will be an infantry fighting vehicle to replace the Army's Bradley fighting vehicle, which is manufactured by BAE.

It was not an easy decision to go with a hybrid-electric drive system, but in the end BAE believes it will be the vehicle's critical enabling technology, said Mark Signorelli, vice president and general manager of the BAE GCV team, speaking July 26 at a press conference in Washington. BAE was one of the main developers of the Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicles, which were also going to rely on hybrid-electric technology.

The hybrid-electric drive system saves on fuel costs and increases on-board and off-board power, said Signorelli. The company predicts the hybrid-electric drive system will provide up to 20 percent in savings in fuel conservation and a 50-percent reduction in moving parts, which means better reliability and easier maintainability, said Signorelli.

It also frees up four tons of weight, which can go instead toward armor protection, he said.

Inside the Army, there are proponents and skeptics of hybrid-electric vehicles, said Signorelli. The hybrid-electric FCS manned ground vehicles were terminated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates over a year ago. During source selection, the Army rejected a proposal from Oshkosh and Northrop Grumman for a hybrid-electric Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

However, hybrid-electric technology no longer is a radical idea; it is used every day in today's cars, buses and heavy mining and construction equipment, said Signorelli.

The technology offers improvements in mobility, especially acceleration, he said. This makes the vehicle more survivable, as it can maneuver out of dangerous situations more quickly. BAE's GCV can keep pace with the Abrams tank's acceleration and agility requirements, said Signorelli.

BAE's core platform is expected to weigh 53 tons and is designed to still meet mobility requirements at a gross weight of 75 tons, said Signorelli.

This gives the platform a wide margin of flexibility to accept additional armor kits and other systems as the vehicle evolves, he said. The team also decided to go with a manned turret for maximum situational awareness.

The BAE team also announced new members, including QinetiQ, MTU, L3, Raytheon and Saft. QinetiQ North America will provide the electric drive propulsion or E-X Drive system for the GCV. This is a key component of the hybrid-electric drive system, according to a BAE press release. Saft is providing the energy storage system, while Raytheon will contribute sensors, lethality systems and controls.

MTU and Raytheon are also on a team led by General Dynamics, which has also partnered with Lockheed Martin. SAIC is teamed with Boeing and Germany vehicle-manufacturer KMW to offer a variation of KMW's Puma vehicle. All three teams rely on MTU power pack and engine technology.

Company teams submitted proposals in May, and the Army is expected to award up to three technology development contracts in September.

[buglerbilly]

BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman Add Members to Ground Combat Vehicle Team

(Source: BAE Systems; issued July 26, 2010)

ARLINGTON, Va. --- BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman today announced additional members to their GCV team in their bid for the U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) competition.

“We have built a team that has extensive experience and innovation in the development and production of combat systems and subsystems,” said Mark Signorelli, vice president and general manager of Ground Combat Vehicles at BAE Systems. “With this team we bring more to our customer by providing a vehicle that will meet the Army’s requirements for a highly survivable platform that can adapt to a constantly evolving and changing operational environment; from humanitarian relief to a full scale battlefield.”

Each teammate will bring a different capability to GCV that will help to strengthen the BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman team offering. As the prime contractor, BAE Systems will provide the overall program management and systems integration for GCV and will also be responsible for providing the vehicle design, structure, logistical support as well as the readiness and sustainment of the platform. Northrop Grumman will serve as the C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) lead.

BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman GCV teammates include:

QinetiQ North America will provide the electric drive propulsion system or E-X-Drive™ for Ground Combat Vehicles. The E-X-Drive is the key component of the hybrid electric drive system, which minimizes electrical demand, saves on vehicle fuel costs, improves reliability, provides higher dash speed and acceleration and increased on-board and off-board power. Saft will provide the energy storage system for the GCV.

The BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman GCV offering will be the first combat vehicle designed from the ground-up to operate in an IED-threat environment. The team’s offering will provide survivability, mobility and versatility that will address the operational requirements of the customer.

The GCV mine survivability will exceed that of a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, while the enhanced mobility capabilities will allow the GCV to operate in urban and cross country environments. The team’s vehicle will also have an integrated electronic network capability and embedded intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to connect the warfighters.

The open architecture electronics will also be adaptable to future network upgrades as new technologies mature. The modular armor system will allow the unit commander to rapidly apply or remove kits in the field to adjust to the tactical situation.

BAE Systems is the top producer of combat vehicles in the world and provides nearly 80 percent of the vehicles in the Heavy Brigade Combat Team (HBCT).

The GCV program is a development effort headed by the U.S. Army to develop the first combat vehicle designed from the ground up to operate in an IED-threat environment.

BAE Systems is a global defense, security and aerospace company with approximately 107,000 employees worldwide. The Company delivers a full range of products and services for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced electronics, security, information technology solutions and customer support services. In 2009 BAE Systems reported sales of £22.4 billion (US $36.2 billion).

Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

BAE’s GCV Weighs 53 Tons, Hybrid

By Colin Clark Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 4:52 pm

UPDATED: EXCLUSIVE First Picture of BAE’s GCV



It’s wide. It’s not light. It’s learned lessons from MRAPs and is survivable. It manages bandwidth so big fat transmission pipes like the doomed T-Sat satellites aren’t needed It’s BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman’s offering for the Ground Combat Vehicle.

The base version is 53 tons. Going into a highly lethal environment? Then commanders may well want their troops to bolt on modular armor and storage pods that bring the weight up to 75 tons. Powering this vehicle that looks an awful lot like a tank, is a hybrid electric drive, technology that worries some in the Army who don’t believe it is sufficiently tried and true yet.

Mark Signorelli, BAE’s vice president and general manager for ground combat vehicles, told reporters that the decision to go with hybrid technology –“key enabling technology for the vehicle” — was one of the most “painful I’ve gone through.” The drive, produced by QintiQ NA, is the same as was proposed for BAE’s FCS offering. Signorelli said he knows the Army is split on the technology’s risk and benefits but argues that the commercial sector has used them for almost a decade in heavy construction equipment. Hybrid technology has “gone from being a radical idea to something we all ride” in on America’s streets, he said.

Among the benefits of hybrid drive: enormous torque; huge power supply for the vehicle and to power other equipment; 50 percent fewer parts so maintenance costs are lower; 10 percent fuel savings over comparable vehicles; added protection because the hybrid drive allows them to add some 4 tons of armor compared to a traditional engine. Will Army leadership buy BAE’s arguments and will testing bear out their claims? Wait and see time.

The GCV also uses something that Signorelli called a “hit avoidance system.” It is a combination of “hard kill protection” — something like what the FCS program called “active protection” — along with “soft kill” protection, a combination of jammers and decoys. Readers will remember that the active protection system was one of the failed promises of FCS. This will be an area to watch closely as the program develops.

Among the other attributes of the BAE’s GCV offering are a crew compartment designed for today’s larger soldiers who also carry larger and heavier loads. Signorelli said the new vehicle was designed to keep troops as rested as possible so they could go into action with minimal fatigue incurred by the miseries of riding in a cramped and bouncy ride.

[Gubler, A.]

Wow its the FCS but uglier...

[buglerbilly]

It's sure got a lot of shit hanging off the outside BUT then again better on the outside than cluttering up the interior.

Glad to see someone recognising the fact we have BIGGER people now............

[Gubler, A.]

It's sure got a lot of shit hanging off the outside BUT then again better on the outside than cluttering up the interior.

Some of the exterior add ons seem a bit ridiculous. Like the twin TOW launcher from the Bradley. Does an IFV need such a system in the era of NLOS-LS.... ahh yeah... Well the US Army came close to an integrated combat system, so close...

[buglerbilly]

Bigger pic.........

[buglerbilly]

Reshaping Future Combat Vehicle Strategy

GCV Claims Priority; Congress Rejects Bradley Reprogramming

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 16 August 2010

With dollars becoming scarcer, the U.S. Army is prioritizing its combat vehicle modernization needs, putting the fledgling Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program at the top of its list. However, until details of the Army's vehicle plan become better known, Congress is hesitant to move money away from existing programs, according to congressional documents.

Earlier this year, the Army asked Congress for permission to trim Bradley fighting vehicle funding by $154 million and direct the money to higher priorities. In a July 23 letter to Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., denied the request.

In the letter, the leaders of the House Armed Services Committee note the Army's GCV timeline will require the Army to continue upgrading its fleet of Bradley vehicles. The first iteration of GCV is an infantry fighting vehicle set to replace the Bradley starting in 2017. It is not slated to replace the other types of Bradley platforms found in a heavy brigade.

Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) helped guide the early development of the GCV.

"In addition, the committee believes that the Army's plans regarding its future mechanized vehicle fleet and force structure remain uncertain," the congressmen wrote. For these reasons, according to the letter, the committee thinks the transfer of funds away from the Bradley program is "premature."

For now, Congress has deferred further requests by the Army to move more money out of the Bradley program.

As part of a July 2 omnibus reprogramming request, the Army asked to move another $200 million away from the Bradley program. A similar cut would move $143 million out of research-and-development funding for the Army's Combat Vehicle Improvement program. But both requests were denied by the House Armed Services Committee, according to a congressional source.

According to the request, the funds would have been available because the Pentagon had delayed its decision to upgrade the Bradley fighting vehicle and the Abrams tank.

In the meantime, the Army is working on a combat vehicle strategy that will outline how the service plans to modernize its fleet of combat vehicles, said Brig. Gen. Robert Dyess at a July 27 vehicle conference hosted by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement in Tysons Corner, Fairfax County, Va. Dyess is the director of requirements and integration at the Army Capabilities Integration Center, part of Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).

The GCV is the service's first priority, he said. Many of the Army's other combat vehicles are slated for upgrades or replacement, but they are all competing for the same pot of money.

For example, the Army intends to begin divestiture of the M113 family of armored tracked vehicles, creating a need for a replacement. A double V-hull that improves protection against roadside bombs now is being tested for the Stryker vehicles. If those tests prove successful, that effort will demand more funding.

And the Army's Abrams tanks also are due for an upgrade.

"I'd be careful of totally writing off the tank," said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the Army. "I don't think we need the numbers we possibly have today. One of the things we're doing in our combat vehicle modernization strategy is taking a look at the role of the tank, the Bradley, all our systems, in the future and what we really need to have."

To answer these questions, the Army also needs to determine what future mix of Stryker, infantry and heavy brigades it needs, an effort being led by TRADOC. According to Army officials, these are the kinds of questions the service is grappling with as it writes the strategy document and conducts capability portfolio reviews, which are being led Chiarelli.

The reviews aim to figure out just what the Army owns, what is still needed and whether any of it overlaps, the vice chief said last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

One of the reviews centered on combat vehicle modernization.

Recent reprogramming actions may reflect some of the decisions emerging from that review and from the Army's combat vehicle strategy. The omnibus reprogramming request from July 2 indicated the Army would like to shift $10 million to start developing a replacement for the M113 armored personnel carrier.

"These funds will inform the Army on the current state-of-the-art M113 replacement options, potentially provide a forum for industrial teaming allowing the Army to refine its requirement document and explore current vehicles for adaptability to the M113 requirements," according to the document.

An Army official said the options on the table could include mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles; a Bradley derivative platform; the Stryker vehicle; or some kind of mix.

BAE Systems, which manufactures Bradleys and M113s, is pushing for a Bradley derivative.

In the late 1990s, the Army had a program of record to replace the M113 evacuation vehicles with a Bradley derivative, said Rick Burtnett, program manager for Bradley derivatives at BAE Systems. BAE built two prototypes of the XM11 Armored Medical Evacuation Vehicle; those went through contractor testing and were about to be delivered to the Army when the Army canceled the program and shifted the money to other funding priorities, primarily Future Combat Systems, Burtnett said.

"The Army recognized back then the potential for replacing M113s with a Bradley-based derivative," he said.

The company has dusted off its prototypes and has built additional ones for each of the M113 mission roles, including medical treatment, command and control, and the mortar vehicle, Burtnett said. The company has shown these at Army trade shows for the last few years.

The Bradleys being replaced by GCVs in each brigade could be repurposed to replace M113s, he said.

[buglerbilly]

TACOM Guides Combat Vehicle Development Since WWII

Groups Numerous Agencies That Focus On Ground Systems

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 16 August 2010

Created to build tanks for World War II, the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) Life Cycle Management Command is a driving force behind the service's next-generation of combat vehicles.

TACOM, headquartered in Warren, Mich., is one of the Army's largest research, development and sustainment organizations.

It has 24,000 employees worldwide, of which 200 are active-duty military members, said TACOM spokesman Don Jarosz. For 2010, the agency's budget for contracting is $15 billion, he said.

According to a TACOM slogan, "If a Soldier eats it, wears it, drives it, or shoots it … we develop, provide, or sustain it."

To do this, TACOM brings together all of the organizations that focus on soldier and ground systems, including the Integrated Logistics Support Center, Program Executive Office (PEO) Combat Support and Combat Service Support, PEO Ground Combat Systems, PEO Soldier and PEO Integration.

It also works closely with the Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), TACOM Contracting Center, the Armaments Research, Development & Engineering Center, Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center and the Joint PEO for Chemical and Biological Defense.

By tapping into a wealth of expertise, TACOM and TARDEC have helped guide the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program in its initial stages, said Paul Mehney, spokesman for PEO Integration.

"TARDEC research-and-development efforts heavily influenced what we eventually asked industry for," he said. "They helped inform the program community what was in the realm of the reasonable, which really guided us as we looked at proposals and looked at requirements definition."

The Warren location near Detroit - home of the American auto industry - was selected as the site of Army Tank Arsenal in 1940 to build tanks for World War II. It officially became the Army Tank-Automotive Command (TACOM) in 1967 and added armaments to its name in 1994.

"There are research and development programs, which, frankly, don't exist in other places in the country," Mehney said. "Think alternative energy, hybrid systems, power management and looking at the human level of unmanned systems and how soldiers interact with them.

"As we move through the Ground Combat Vehicle program, TARDEC will play a pivotal role in systems engineering expertise and integration expertise, as that vehicle continues to morph into what it eventually will be," Mehney said.

PEO Ground Combat Systems now manages the GCV program, having taken it over from PEO Integration. The PEO is under the leadership of Scott Davis, who took charge of the office in June. Previously, he worked as deputy program executive officer for PEO Integration and before that was part of the Future Combat Systems team.

TACOM also changed leadership this year, with Maj. Gen. Kurt Stein taking command in January. Stein previously served in Iraq as the deputy chief of staff, Multi-National Force – Iraq, Combined Joint 1/4/8.

TACOM is part of the Army Materiel Command, while the associated program executive offices report directly to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology.

[buglerbilly]

Army Cancels GCV Competition

By Greg Grant Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 11:13 am



Sources tell DoD Buzz that the Army has canceled the Ground Combat Vehicle competition because the current Requests for Proposal (RFPs) do not accurately reflect Army requirements and a changing acquisition strategy.

More to follow.

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/08/25/army-cancels-gcv-competition/#ixzz0xdM0bZao

[buglerbilly]

Army Abruptly Cancels Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Competition



Sources tell us that the Army has canceled the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) solicitation because the current Requests for Proposal (RFP) do not accurately reflect Army requirements and a changing acquisition strategy.

A contract for the new vehicle was close to being awarded, we’re told. A restart of the GCV competition is expected fairly soon, a new RFP may be out within 60 days, and the Army intends to stay within the original seven year timeline to field a new vehicle.

A contentious debate has taken place among Army officials regarding the new infantry fighting vehicle’s lengthy requirements list, a debate fed by an internal “red team” analysis which scrutinized vehicle proposals and the lethality of modern and future battlefields, as well as disagreement among leadership about the service’s GCV acquisition strategy. The proposed GCV, which is intended to replace the Army’s Bradley fleet, was getting a bit unwieldy, we’re told, as builders attempted to meet the many requirements.

The Army will issue a formal announcement this afternoon. Lawmakers (the few who are available in late August; more like their secretaries) were notified of the GCV cancellation this morning.

– Greg Grant

Read more: http://defensetech.org/#ixzz0xdNppzwe
Defense.org

[buglerbilly]

Army Cancels GCV Competition

By Greg Grant Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 11:13 am

The Army has canceled the Ground Combat Vehicle competition because the current Requests for Proposal (RFPs) do not accurately reflect Army requirements and a changing acquisition strategy.

A contract for the new vehicle was close to being awarded, we’re told. A restart of the GCV competition is expected fairly soon, a new RFP may be out within 60 days, and the Army intends to stay within the original seven year timeline to field a new vehicle.

The GCV competition was cancelled so the Army can “better ensure an achievable, affordable, and timely infantry fighting vehicle,” according to an emailed Army announcement. The cancellation will result in a six month delay of the program, although the service intends to field a vehicle within seven years after a contract is awarded. The statement says:

“In May 2010, the Army partnered with OSD (AT&L) to conduct a thorough study of the Ground Combat Vehicle program, referred to as a Red Team analysis. The Red Team review recommended that the Army prioritize the planned vehicle’s capabilities to meet achievable goals within the program’s acquisition schedule. This holistic review included an examination of vehicle capabilities, operational needs, the acquisition strategy, program schedule and technology readiness.

In conjunction with the Red Team recommendations, the Army determined that it must revise the acquisition strategy to rely on mature technologies in order to reduce significant developmental risk over a seven year schedule following the initial contract award. The refined RFP will result in a vehicle that provides soldiers with critical armored protection in the modern combat environment.”

The emailed announcement says details of the specific RFP are still being finalized and the service expects to issue a new solicitation within the next 60 days. Lawmakers were notified of the GCV cancellation this morning.

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/08/25/army-cancels-gcv-competition/#ixzz0xfYfPBVH

[buglerbilly]

The last word on this for the moment..........

U.S. Army Delays Ground Combat Vehicle

By JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 25 Aug 2010 13:54

The U.S. Army will delay its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, cancelling the current Request for Proposals and issuing a new one in about two months, DoD officials said Aug. 25.


The GCV will replace the Bradely Fighting Vehicle. (U.S. Army)

One industry source said contract awards would follow the new RfP by about nine months.

The source said the delay would be costly for the industry teams that responded to the February RfP, because their engineers and support personnel will continue to be paid during the delay despite a lack of government funding.

The Army requested $934 million for the program for fiscal year 2011. One congressional source said the new delay means the service "may lose a good portion of the FY11 request, depending on what the new program schedule looks like."

In a statement, DoD officials said the decision followed a May review by the Army and the Pentagon's acquisition, logistics and technology shop of the GCV program's vehicle capabilities, operational needs, acquisition strategy, program schedule and technology readiness.

The reviewers, dubbed the Red Team, recommended that the Army prioritize the planned vehicle's capabilities to meet achievable goals within the program's acquisition schedule.

In response, service officials determined that a revised GCV acquisition plan would be needed, one built around "mature technologies in order to reduce significant developmental risk over a seven-year schedule following the initial contract award," the statement said. "The refined RfP will result in a vehicle that provides soldiers with critical armored protection in the modern combat environment."

The industry source said the move was driven by internal differences over the requirements for the new vehicles, saying service officials "simply cannot agree on the performance requirements, and things like how they should be prioritized."

The source said the Red Team told Army officials they had two options: upgrade the existing ground vehicle fleet; or start over, a move that the source said could mean it will be seven to 10 years before the first GCV is delivered.

Funding Threatened

The House Armed Services Committee, in a report that accompanied their version of the 2011 defense authorization bill, expressed concerns about the GCV's requirements, saying they were "extremely ambitious in some areas."

"The committee is concerned that, once again, the Army may be asking the defense industry to build a 'gold-plated' vehicle that may take longer to develop than planned and prove to be extremely expensive to procure," the committee said in its report.

The House also said it was concerned by the Army's choice to release a request for proposals at the same time it was undertaking an analysis of alternatives. While the Red Team scrutinized the program, a separate group conducted the analysis of alternatives, which normally takes place before an RfP is issued.

In February, before the RfP was released, Maj. Gen. John Bartley, program executive officer for integration, said that carrying out the RfP and the analysis of alternatives in parallel would give the Army more information to decide on the GCV. He said the service would be able to consider industry's proposals, the cost of those proposals and whatever alternatives to a new vehicle may be out there.

"If the analysis says the gap can be filled by product improving the Bradley [armored fighting vehicle] or the Abrams [tank] or a Stryker [personnel carrier], then the GCV goes away and the Army looks at upgrading those systems. That's a very big possibility," Bartley said at the time.

In the House report, the committee urged the Army to conduct a thorough review of the GCV requirements.

The committee also encouraged the Army "to carefully consider whether or not it is possible to upgrade current vehicles, including some foreign designs, to meet baseline GCV requirements on an accelerated schedule that could get a vehicle in the hands of troops more quickly than the current seven-year timeline."

Why GCV?

The program was started after Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled the vehicle component of the Army's Future Combat Systems program last year. Three industry teams responded to a February request for proposals to build up to three technology demonstrators. The Army had planned to award the demonstrator contracts in September.

Those teams are an SAIC-led team that includes Boeing and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann; a BAE-Northrop-led effort; and a group led by General Dynamics Land Systems that includes Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Critics have questioned the GCV's heavy design (50 to 70 tons) and have wondered why replacing the Bradley fighting vehicle is the Army's top priority now.

Army officials offered their argument in a series of recent white papers: The GCV, which will carry an entire infantry squad, will allow the kind of decentralized maneuver warfare and wide-area security that will be the Army's critical contributions to future joint warfare.

The Bradley carries just six soldiers besides its three-person crew, forcing a squad commander to split up the team. Meanwhile, the Stryker is too lightly armored for full-spectrum warfare, while the various Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles have limited mobility, Army officials argued.

---

Kate Brannen contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Army Cancellation of GCV Competition Highlights Service’s Confusion

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued August 26, 2010)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

The Army has decided to cancel its request for proposals (RFP) for a new armored combat system, the ground combat vehicle (GCV). This is a stunning development given that GCV is the Army’s sole new major vehicle program, and that awards for the first round of contracts was anticipated within weeks. Although no reasons have yet been given for the decision to cancel the procurement, observers are concerned that the decision reflects the implosion of the Army’s vision of its future.

The GCV is intended to exploit technologies developed for the FCS program and lessons learned in responding to threats experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because it is not starting from scratch, the GCV is supposed to be ready for prime time in five to seven years. While the official GCV specifications were not made public, Army sources identified a general set of characteristics. Key among them are a high degree of survivability, the ability to operate in complex environments (particularly in an urban setting), space for a squad of 12 soldiers and two to three crewmen, one or more cannons for direct fires and a capability to generate internal power sufficient to support an enhanced computing/communications network and a host of advanced sensors.

The GCV would have been in addition to an Army vehicle park that already consists of tens of thousands of new, armored or more survivable Bradleys, M-1 Abrams, MRAPS, M-ATVs, Humvees, trucks and Stryker wheeled combat vehicles. There is virtually no vehicle in the Army’s inventory that has not gone through one or more major upgrades or survivability enhancement program. It is difficult to understand what the GCV would bring to the game that was really new or better. The Army is under pressure to find ways of inserting the MRAPs into its Table of Organization and Equipment so that the billions spent on those vehicles will not turn out to have been a waste. If the Army cannot even make use of all the vehicles it currently owns, the argument goes, why invest in still another system?

One contributor to the decision to cancel the procurement could be the vehicle’s weight. Reports were leaking out of the GCV program that all the proposals submitted envisioned a vehicle weighing over 70 tons. The original FCS concept envisioned a manned ground vehicle weighing no more than 18 tons, probably wheeled and able to be transported in a C-130. The GCV was supposed to weigh around 40 tons. But when you want better than MRAP protection in a vehicle carrying lots of people, guns, ammunition, computers and power generators, guess what: it gets big and heavy. In some quarters, this sounded less like an armored personnel carrier and more like a land battleship or the Death Star on tracks.

Another potential source of problems is doctrinal in nature. The GCV is intended to replace aging vehicles in the Heavy Brigade Combat Teams (HBCTs). The primary role of the HBCT is to conduct combined arms maneuver particularly against adversaries with well-equipped, relatively large ground forces. Think the march to Baghdad and the rout of the Iraqi Republican Guard in 2003.

But the Army has had problems sufficiently defining the future requirement for high intensity combined arms maneuver so as to justify the need for a new heavy combat vehicle. Reading the Army’s new Capstone Concept and Operational Concept, the future character of combined arms maneuver warfare remain very unclear. The examples provided - the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in 2006 and the U.S.-Iraq operation in Sadr city in 2008 - relate more to irregular warfare under very restricted conditions and, hence, seem to confuse more than illuminate. Does engaging in irregular warfare (the Army’s documents have relabeled this wide-area security) really require the Army to invent yet another armored vehicle?

Apparently, the Red Team brought in to review the GCV program plan found that what the Army had created was a Christmas tree on tracks. It has something for everyone. The Red Team reportedly told the Army to prioritize its requirements or risk losing the whole program. Reports coming out of the Red Team review say that the army leadership cannot agree on the priority set of requirements for the GCV. This suggests that the Army has failed to make the intellectual case for its future force even to itself.

Some sources indicate that GCV is not totally dead and that the Army will restart the competition. This would be good since several proposals included important new technologies. For example, the BAE Systems team proposed a hybrid electric drive, the first one even for a major armored combat vehicle.

But if the Army cannot be clear on what problem it is trying to solve, and what contribution a GCV can make to the solution, the next RFP could go the way of the one that has just failed. Asking the companies to start over, write new proposals and keep design teams together for up to an additional year before they even know if they have won an award is extremely costly and very unfair.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army's GCV Delay: Lesson Unlearned?

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 27 Aug 2010 12:54

Why did the U.S. Army delay its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) development effort? Because it didn't learn a key lesson of the failed Future Combat Systems (FCS) program: don't overreach.


Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli wanted to know what the Ground Combat Vehicle would provide that an upgraded Bradley armored fighting vehicle wouldn’t. Above, a Bradley on patrol in Mosul, Iraq. (U.S. ARMY)

That's the consensus from industry and congressional officials, as well as the DoD-Army red team whose review led the Army to cancel the request for proposals it issued in February.

In an Aug. 25 announcement, service officials said they would issue a revised request in 60 days.

"The new RfP will reflect changes to the program's efforts to minimize technology integration risk and to ensure that we have a viable acquisition strategy to deliver the vehicle within seven years of the contract award," GCV program spokesman Paul Mehney said Aug. 26.

FCS died because it relied upon immature technologies that became increasingly irrelevant the longer they took to develop, said Dave Johnson, a retired colonel and a senior analyst at the Rand Corp.

The GCV delay indicates the service is still trying to get this right.

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates cancelled the vehicle component of FCS in April 2009, the Army quickly forged a new program to buy next-generation combat vehicles, issuing an RfP in 10 months and vowing to start production within seven years.

"There is an old saying in the Pentagon, 'If you want it bad, you get it bad,' " said Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Within months, the red team had deemed the effort as too ambitious.

"This vehicle had too many performance requirements and too many capabilities to make it an affordable and readily fielded system," Lexington Institute analyst Loren Thompson said.

Analysts said the Army's delay amounted to an admission that service leaders recognized their mistakes and are moving to correct them early on. The service is "really serious about getting this into the realm of, not the possible, but the likely in the timeframe they're looking at," Johnson said.

Krepinevich agreed.

"A few months' delay in the program now could reap great benefits down the road," he said.

But others said the Army's inability to articulate its future operational needs is already weakening policymakers' confidence and putting funding at risk.

Army Moved Quickly

When Gates ordered up a replacement for the FCS vehicle program last year, he indicated that a new program should adhere as closely as possible to the FCS vehicles' fielding schedule. But he also said that "because of its size and importance, we must get the acquisition right, even at the cost of delay."

The vehicle component of FCS was valued at $87 billion.

"The danger you always run when a program is canceled is that if you don't explain quickly how you're going to reapply the money to meet the mission needs, it will be taken away and spent someplace else," Thompson said.

One source who attended an Army industry day last fall said he wondered whether GCV was a "conceptual Kabuki dance" meant to placate Gates until he retires, and then allow the Army to take a "deep and informed breath" and figure out what it really needed.

Gates appeared to boost the pressure this spring, when he told an audience at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that "we can shave a little time off" the GCV schedule, citing the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program, which went from an idea to full-rate production "in a year."

The House Armed Services Committee added its own pressure this spring. In a report that accompanied their version of the 2011 defense authorization bill, lawmakers encouraged the service "to carefully consider whether or not it is possible to upgrade current vehicles, including some foreign designs, to meet baseline GCV requirements on an accelerated schedule that could get a vehicle in the hands of troops more quickly than the current seven-year timeline."

The Army has considered the option of upgrading vehicles it already owns instead of buying a new vehicle. According to sources, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of the Army, asked during a combat vehicle portfolio review, "What will I get with the GCV that an upgraded Bradley [armored fighting vehicle] won't give me?"

Based on a series of recently released Army concept papers, the answer to that question appears to be squad integrity. The GCV is being designed to carry an intact nine-man squad, plus a crew of three, while the Bradley can only carry six squad members and a three-man crew. The Stryker personnel carrier can carry a full nine-man squad, but has a lower level of protection and therefore has to dismount farther from the objective, the papers explain.

While the Army remains committed to the GCV concept, the recent stop-and-start may prove costly.

The Army requested $934 million for GCV for fiscal year 2011. One congressional source said the delay means the service "may lose a good portion of the FY11 request, depending on what the new program schedule looks like."

Mehney said the Army is working its own budget analysis, "based on the decision and the delayed time period."

Red Team

Unusually, the Army decided to conduct an analysis of alternatives at the same time it issued an RfP. The proposal drew some resistance from DoD and congressional officials, but Maj. Gen. John Bartley, program executive officer for integration, explained in February that the parallel efforts would allow the Army to better consider industry's proposals, their cost and alternatives to a new vehicle.

"If the analysis says the gap can be filled by product improving the Bradley or the Abrams [tank] or a Stryker, then the GCV goes away and the Army looks at upgrading those systems. That's a very big possibility," Bartley said at the time.

According to industry sources familiar with the first RfP, the requirements placed on industry were stringent and demanded an enormous level of armor to protect soldiers, the vehicle and its sensors. This led to heavy and costly solutions.

A disconnect emerged between what the Army required in its RfP and what the service expected to get, an industry source said. A light went on after industry responded to the Army's questions about the June bids. The Army got a "resounding" response from industry of "you asked for it, you got it," the source said.

New Contracts in 6 Months

The GCV program was also gearing up for a September Milestone A review with Pentagon acquisition executive Ashton Carter.

"The program continues to work preparations for a pending milestone review," Mehney said. "However, due to the changes in the RfP and acquisition strategy, the milestone review date is now delayed."

However, even with the delay, the Army plans on awarding competitive contracts for the technology development phase of the program within six months, Mehney said.

Mehney said the new RfP, for which work is underway, will still emphasize force protection and survivability.

Industry Reaction

The Army's decision took many by surprise, including the industry teams competing for contracts for the first phase of the program. The Army had planned to award those this fall.

"We are currently evaluating the impacts of this decision and are consulting with Government program officials to determine a path forward," said Kelly Golden, spokeswoman for BAE Systems, who teamed with Northrop Grumman to propose a hybrid-electric vehicle.

"While we are disappointed in the government's decision to cancel the Ground Combat Vehicle solicitation, we support the Army in its effort to further refine critical requirements," said Melissa Koskovich, SAIC spokeswoman. SAIC is leading a team that includes Boeing and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, whose Puma vehicle served as the basis of the team's bid.

"Our team is committed to provide the Army a comprehensive response after it adjusts its requirements and issues a new request for proposals," said a spokesman for General Dynamics Land Systems, whose team included Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

ADVS, a small business based in Michigan, submitted a fourth proposal that the Army rejected. ADVS protested the service's decision and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was in the process of evaluating that protest.

"We are surprised by the sudden RfP cancellation and are looking forward to understanding the Army's revised requirements and being a part of GCV in the future," an ADVS spokeswoman said. The ADVS vehicle proposal offered an "extraordinary level of crew protection, exceeding many GCV requirements," according to the ADVS statement. According to an industry source, the team submitted a wheeled vehicle solution.

The GAO will halt its evaluation of the ADVS protest now that the RfP is canceled, an Army official said.

[buglerbilly]

GCV Review Causes Jam For Other Army Vehicles

Sep 7, 2010



By Michael Fabey

The recent cancellation of the Ground Combat Vehicle request for proposals (RFP) is part of an overall U.S. Army review of its major GCV programs that could reshape those different fleets and alter the course of their procurement.

Indeed, the Army has already started to withhold funding for other ground vehicle programs as it analyzes requirements for another GCV RFP.

For example, after the Army cancelled the GCV RFP late last month, the service also halted funding for the Block 2 Bradley program, says Roy Perkins, BAE Systems’ director of business development for the heavy brigade combat team.

“There is a program of record and it is funded,” Perkins tells AVIATION WEEK. “The money was released to the Army, and the Army is not releasing it to the program manager pending the outcome of the GCV decision.”

The Bradley Block 2 is meant to recapture some of the performance parameters the vehicle gave up when it was made more survivable to withstand improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and other new threats in Iraq.

BAE is looking to ramp up the available power in the vehicle for its electronic systems, give it more ground clearance and regain some of its speed, Perkins says.

And the contractor is ready to go once the Army review is finished. “We already have identified proposals and design plans,” he says.

Nothing is being considered, though, during the current review. “Any ground vehicle program is being held up on GCV,” Perkins says.

When the Army cancelled the current GCV RFP Aug. 25, it said it expected to release another RFP for the $40 billion Bradley replacement in about two months, delaying the overall program by about half a year (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 26).

The Army says it wanted “mature technologies in order to reduce significant developmental risk over a seven-year schedule following the initial contract award” to provide “soldiers with critical armored protection in the modern combat environment.”

The cancellation came after a review conducted by both the Army and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics “as part of a continuing effort to ensure that all Army acquisitions effectively and affordably meet the needs of our soldiers,” the Army said (Aerospace DAILY, July 1).

The “holistic review,” the Army says, included an “examination of vehicle capabilities, operational needs, the acquisition strategy, program schedule and technology readiness.”

The contract cancellation was made at the earliest stage of the acquisition process, according to the Army, and the resulting delay “will best ensure the long-term success of the Ground Combat Vehicle program by better aligning vehicle capabilities with the anticipated needs of future combat operations.”

Photo credit: U.S. Army

[buglerbilly]

Interview : Malcolm O'Neill

Acquisition Executive, U.S. Army

Published: 6 September 2010

Only six months into the job, U.S. Army acquisition executive Malcolm O'Neill is making his mark. At O'Neill's direction, the service canceled its request for proposals for the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program on Aug. 25 and announced it would issue a new request within 60 days. O'Neill, who took office after the original request was released, decided the requirements needed to be prioritized and less time given to technology development.


Malcolm O'Neill is the U.S. Army's acquisition executive. (Sheila Vemmer / Staff)

O'Neill retired as a lieutenant general after 34 years in the Army that included a stint as director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, now the Missile Defense Agency. He turned to industry, working for Lockheed Martin from 1996 to 2006. More recently, he served as chairman of the board on Army Science and Technology for the National Academies and the National Research Council. Now, as assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, O'Neill said he wants to revamp Army research and development.

Q. How was the decision made to pull the request for proposals (RfP) for the Ground Combat Vehicle?

A. Well, the debate was basically on the topic of integration of the system. It appeared that we were investing a lot of our money and our time into technologies that basically already had significant investments, and that the risk in the program was putting all these pieces together.

What I asked my staff to look at was the best ratio of time to develop technologies and time to integrate them. It came back with a different shape than we had going into the program.

We had a lot of time at the beginning of the program, in the old approach, to work on technology, to work on research and development, where the going-in position was, "make sure you contractors have the best technology and that you've done most of the technological work." That didn't manifest itself in the existing strategy.

So, what I did, basically, was shorten the time to do technology optimization and lengthen the time to do integration so that in integration, you can do what we call test, find and fix. You need to have many cycles of that, so that when you make your final production decision, you have the right vehicle, at the right price, at the right time.

At the same time, we had a study initiated by [DoD acquisition chief Ashton] Carter and myself, which we called the Red Team. They were an independent group. And the Red Team came back with basically the same conclusions that we had. We decided as a result of that that we had to change what we were doing. And we did that for the benefit of industry, the benefit of the American people and the benefit of the Army.

Q. How will the new GCV RfP differ?

A. We will be much more specific about what the technology starting points should be. We're going to specify a particular technology readiness level (TRL) before you start the program.

Now, if you don't want to start at that point, you have to justify. If somebody says, "The TRL is pretty low, but I'm sure I can make it by the time we have to start the integration part of the program," he can do that, but he's accepting risk in the source selection process. And he's accepting risk in himself in how much this system is going to cost, how long it's going to take to do things, how hard it's going to be to repair the system and those kinds of things.

Q. In the old RfP, were the technology readiness levels lower or not specified?

A. There was much more flexibility. In the old RfP, they said as long as you have confidence by the time this phase of the program is over that you've reached the particular technology readiness level, that's fine. But achieving that level was still short of what was needed to do systems integration, from my perspective.

Q. So, does it shift risk from the government to the companies?

A. Absolutely. And I felt it was an unacceptable level of risk. And it didn't really get to what we wanted. What we wanted was a system that would do the job reliably and affordably. And with the technical risk that still existed, you could get a big variance in how much this thing would cost, how long it would take to build it, how reliable it was. And I don't think that's what industry wants or what the Army needs.

Q. Some say the Army doesn't really know what it wants for its new fighting vehicle. How did you weigh the risk of this perception versus the benefits?

A. Well, I think it was relatively simple: It was the idea of what's the right thing to do.

The Army as a whole was in almost universal agreement - let's do what's right, notwithstanding the fact that it could be embarrassing to certain people.

Q. Is there any concern that you will have to convince industry that this time the Army's got it right?

A. No. Generally the perception we've gotten from Congress is, "finally, somebody is in charge." That isn't universal, but when I explain it, they say, "You're absolutely right, that's where the risk is." The risk is in putting all of these pieces together and making them function as a ground combat vehicle.

Q. Will the vehicle's weight, which has been criticized, change?

A. I think with the new RfP the weight is not going to change significantly. If you compare it to an old vehicle, like the Bradley, this will be heavier than the Bradley. The old RfP and this new RfP will basically lead to the weight of the vehicle being very similar.

Q. So the GCV concept remains largely the same? We won't see an RfP for a very different vehicle?

A. No. What we will do this time, too, that I think will help industry is we will emphasize certain requirements. Before, as you read the RfP, as a former industry person, I wasn't quite sure of the priority of all the requirements. It looked almost as if they were all equally important.

It's very hard for a contractor, especially when he's making trades of cost and risk, to have all the requirements equal. We're going to try to correct that because we're going to be talking to the war fighter at Army Training and Doctrine Command, and the war fighter will give us some priorities.

Very few of the requirements will be non-negotiable. You will be able to make trades with the rest of the requirements. There will be a lot better focus in industry, so we're not going to get apples, oranges and grapes. We're going to get Mackintosh, Golden Delicious and Red Delicious.

Q. What led to an RfP where requirements hadn't been prioritized and there was a lot of risk in the Army's approach?

A. I have no idea. The date of the RfP was Feb. 25. I got here on March 10, so I have no idea.

Q. Why is replacing the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, which isn't even in use in Afghanistan, a top priority?

A. Because it satisfies some of the inadequacies of the Bradley and it provides significant soldier protection. One of the things that really impressed me when I got here was the importance of soldier protection today in the Army. I think it's a marvelous orientation of emphasis.

When I was in the Army before, performance was always the primary focus. The important focus today is getting the soldier back in one piece, hopefully without even a wound and without a scratch. That came both from the chief and the vice chief to me. We need better protection for our soldiers. That means a little bit more weight, armor protection on the belly against IEDs, which in the past we didn't consider a significant threat.

Q. You can also see the focus on soldier protection in the new double-V hull for the Stryker. What's the status of that?

A. The testing has been generally very positive. It's done significantly better than we expected because of the double-V structure. The plan right now is to continue the R&D and make a final decision in regard to how many are going to have the double-V and how the Stryker is going to evolve.

Q. What's the timeline for those decisions?

A. Testing is ongoing and the decision will be very soon. I can't give a particular day because we have to assess and analyze the tests.

Q. Since you started in March, what issue do you find you're working on the most?

A. I think affordability is the biggest issue. I think we came through a period where during wartime the American people will give you the largesse to respond quickly and push supplies and systems to the troops. As we come back from one war and we feel that we're on the top of the other war, we have to start thinking about the fact that we might not need as much. We might need to be more economical and managed better. So, ever since I've come in, I think affordability has been really important, both up in [the Office of the Secretary of Defense], through Carter, as well as through Secretary [John] McHugh on the Army side.

Q. Looking ahead a year, what would you like to accomplish?

A. Well, I'd like to see GCV be firmly part of the Army structure, in terms of knowing how much we're going to spend and knowing when. Hopefully, we'll be through milestone A and well into the tech development period, looking for a design for up to three contractors for GCV. In the Paladin PIM program, I'd like to see that moving along smartly toward a milestone C in the FY13 timeframe. I'd like the Apache/Mi-17 programs moving along smartly. I'd like to revamp our R&D program. Marilyn Freeman has just been hired to be our science and technology person. She has all kinds of plans. I'd like to have a chief scientist of the Army on board. I want an independent chief scientist, which we haven't had for many years. I'm hiring one. Ë

-- By Kate Brannen in Washington

Office Profile

■ 2010 budget: $41 billion - roughly 22 percent of the overall Army budget - for Army research, development and acquisition, with $31 billion in the base and $10 billion for overseas contingency operations.

■ Budget request for 2011: $32.6 billion

■ Work force: 1,668 military, 41,607 civilian

Source: Defense News research

[buglerbilly]

Carter Gets Tough on Ground Combat Vehicle Specs

By JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 15 Sep 2010 16:03

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. - Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter drew a line in the sand over the U.S. Army's new combat vehicle, saying the service must include only technologies that can be ready within seven years.

Army officials tell Pentagon acquisition brass that the Ground Combat Vehicle will be fitted with numerous advanced subsystems, Carter said here Sept. 15 during an air power conference.

And how does Carter respond?

"No, it's not," he said he tells Army officials. "It will have the capability it will have in seven years. It's not going to have what you want."

"Why can't you think this way? People have a difficult time understanding that," the longtime Harvard professor said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants the Army to develop a plan that will field a new combat vehicle in that span.

Seven years is ample time to develop and field the GCV, Carter said, because it's more ambitious than past Army vehicle programs, "but it's not a moonshot."

Carter cited the GCV as an example of how new weapon programs end up costing much more when schedules are stretched to accommodate additional development of one or more advanced subsystems.

"You have to control the variable of time," Carter said.

Too often, what happens is program managers find out "the technology is not going to do it for you, so you slip [the schedule] to the right," he said.

In Pentagon acquisitions, time too often is viewed as a "freebie," he bemoaned. "Well, it's not a freebie. What happens is you slip ... and end up increasing costs by 10 percent."

He called the practice "lazy management," saying the Obama administration will be taking steps to control the time variable.

[buglerbilly]

Army Ground Combat Vehicle: Without New Technology It’s Just A Big SUV

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued September 17, 2010)

Per usual with Lexington, this article abuses, insults and generally moans and bitches about what is needed without providing ONE constructive idea or plan...........waste of paper........

Reports coming out of the Pentagon indicate that the Office of the Secretary of Defense and specifically the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L), Dr. Ashton Carter, had a major hand in forcing the Army to withdraw its request for proposals for the new ground combat vehicle (GCV).

As the Under Secretary recounted the story, he told Army leaders that the GCV would have only such capabilities as could be deployed in seven years. Carter called the practice of waiting until technology was available and hence delaying a program “sloppy management.”

The problem is that many of these advanced capabilities are probably critical to the effectiveness and survivability of the GCV and its crew over a potential lifetime of 40 years. Current levels of armor protection and underbody shaping are likely to be inadequate to the threats of the future. Even in Afghanistan, the size of improvised explosives is increasing. The Army likes to talk about the network as its big, new modernization program. Well, that network involves lots of different sensors, communications systems, computers and power sources the GCV will need. To defeat evolving land and air threats, the GCV will need a new suite of more capable weapons. Overall, there is a requirement to integrate all the new systems that would be carried by the GCV.

Apparently, the Under Secretary of Defense does not understand what the GCV is supposed to do. It is not an armored taxi or even an infantry assault vehicle. The GCV is intended as a replacement for the venerable Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. It is supposed to keep up with the fast-moving Abrams M-1 tank, engage in combat with enemy infantry and armor and carry mechanized infantrymen into close proximity with the enemy.

Some readers might wonder why the Army is even bothering to build a new armored fighting vehicle if the problem is lightly-armed insurgents in places like Afghanistan. The answer is that the people who need a new vehicle, the infantry brigades, do not want another big, heavy truck like the MRAP and the people who want something like the GCV, the heavy brigades, don’t have the need. So the GCV has to satisfy both communities.

This means it must carry a squad of nine men, because the new theory of tactical combat says that the entire squad must deploy together. Since it is a fighting vehicle, the GCV must also have lots of offensive weapons, sensors and communications systems. Then it needs a level of protection even better than that of the MRAP, because it has to survive not just improvised explosives but advanced anti-armor weapons that could be deployed by more capable foes than the Afghan Taliban. Add to these requirements off-road mobility and relatively high ground speed and you get a big, heavy platform.

The problem is that the GCV has become a manhood issue for both the Army and for the Under Secretary. The former needs a new combat vehicle program both to salvage something from the FCS program and to have something in the way of a new capability for future ground warfare.

The GCV needs to be substantially better than the existing Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, which could be upgraded if the Army wanted to do so. The Under Secretary needs to prove that his idea of managing procurement programs based on cost and schedule instead of performance can work.

Unfortunately, these two sets of goals are fundamentally at odds. A GCV that adheres to the seven-year schedule is likely to be nothing more than a big, heavy SUV.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army To Host GCV Industry Day Oct. 1

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 22 Sep 2010 15:32

The U.S. Army is hosting an industry day Oct. 1 to inform companies about changes made to its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program since the request for proposals (RfP) was canceled late last month.

"The Army is dedicated to providing interested industry parties with information to ensure understanding of the acquisition process and proposal requirements that have changed as a result of the RfP cancellation," Army spokesman Paul Mehney said in an e-mail.

At the event, general requirements for the technology development phase and the acquisition strategy will be discussed, he said. Because the solicitation is still being worked, the new RfP will not be released then.

The technology development phase will be a 24-month period beginning at the time of contract award, Mehney said. Under the canceled RfP, the technology demonstration phase was set to last 27 months.

Up to four contractors per company are permitted at the industry day, which is to be held in Dearborn, Mich., Mehney said.

The Army released its first request for proposals Feb. 25. That request was canceled Aug. 25, after an Army and Pentagon red team recommended that the service prioritize the planned vehicle's capabilities to meet achievable goals within the program's seven-year acquisition schedule.

[buglerbilly]

Fewer FCS Technologies for GCV Round Two

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 22 Sep 2010 17:56

In an effort to make use of the billions of dollars it invested in the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, the U.S. Army may have required too many immature technologies in its first Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Request for Proposals, according to the Army's vice chief.

"We wanted to look and ensure that we made use of the investment in FCS and that we had the ability to use those technologies," Gen. Peter Chiarelli told reporters at a Sept. 22 lunch in Washington.

However, if you want a vehicle in seven years, "you can't be reaching deep for technologies right now," he said.

On Aug. 25, the Army announced it was canceling its RfP and would release a new one within 60 days. The new request is expected to better prioritize the vehicle's requirements to meet the program's seven-year acquisition schedule. The technology development phase of the program is also being shortened from 27 months to 24 months.

To reflect the changes to the acquisition schedule, the Army has adjusted its 2011 budget request from $934 million to $462 million.

According to industry sources, the original RfP did not leave room for companies to make trades when it came to required technologies, many of which were originally developed for FCS.

According to Chiarelli, FCS was canceled in a way so that the Army could still make use of the research and development work done under the program.

"We wanted to ensure that those technologies that we worked so hard to develop could be integrated in to a new ground combat vehicle," he said.

However, "there were a lot of those technologies that aren't at a technology readiness level today where we could integrate them in seven years."

The new RfP will reflect this, he said. The Army will pursue an incremental strategy for GCV, rather than trying to get more into the vehicle early on. Those FCS technologies could be integrated during later builds, he said, noting that he had not yet been briefed on the new RfP.

As for what went wrong the first time around, Chiarelli said the Army, as well as the other services, faces systemic problems when it comes to generating requirements. This is partly due to the rapid pace at which technology is changing and the military's difficulty keeping up with it, he said.

Chiarelli listed the "four main fundamentals" of the new vehicle: carrying 12 soldiers, operating across the spectrum of warfare, providing significant force protection and having the first production vehicle in seven years.

[buglerbilly]

GCV Must Be Safe, Affordable, Full-Spectrum Capable

(Source: US Army; issued Oct. 4, 2010)

WASHINGTON --- The Army's next combat vehicle must perform through the full spectrum of Army operations, be designed to protect itself and the Soldier, and be built with a budget in mind.

Nearly 300 attendees gathered at an industry day Oct. 1 in Detroit to discuss the acquisition strategy for the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle. During that time, Army officials explained their vision of the GCV program and gave industry insight into what they can expect with the release of the request for proposal that will kick off the development of the new vehicle.

After the Manned Ground Vehicle component was cut from the Army's Future Combat Systems program in June 2009, the Army moved quickly to develop a new vehicle -- the Ground Combat Vehicle. The program released an RFP -- an invitation to industry to come forward with offers to develop the vehicle -- in February 2010. But that RFP was ultimately cancelled in August.

Army officials said they expected a new RFP would be released within 60 days of the August cancellation -- that places the release of the new RFP in November. Program managers say they expect that release date is still doable.

"We're still aiming for that," said Col. Andrew DiMarco, project manager for the GCV, during a telephone conference with media following the industry day. "But the caveat for that is -- what I don't want to do is to put something out on the street that isn't quite right."

While the GCV program is expected to eventually produce multiple vehicles with varying capabilities, the focus for the first block of GCV development is an infantry combat vehicle, said DiMarco.

"With the incremental approach to GCV capability, our increment or block, if you will, is focused on the infantry fighting vehicle," he said. "There may be other variants that are identified from a requirements perspective, and there may be other capabilities that emerge over time... our focus right now is on one GCV, and that is the infantry fighting vehicle."

Michael N. Smith, director of the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, said the Army emphasized the importance of the infantry fighting vehicle to potential GCV contractors during the industry day.

"The requirement is that we need an infantry fighting vehicle that can deliver a squad to the battlefield, in an improvised-explosive-device environment -- realistically in an environment of anywhere along the continuum of operations under Army," Smith said.

Smith also said the Army already has "solutions" that can operate in an IED environment, but that those cannot operate across the full spectrum of operations the Army may be called on to operate in.

"So GCV ... as a platform, is designed to allow us to address ... that spectrum of operations, spectrum of conflict, while moving that squad to where it needs to be," Smith said.

He went on to say that Army leadership developed four imperatives for the GCV, and emphasized those to industry representatives. Those include capacity, force protection, full-spectrum operations and timing. Four imperatives, he said, which are "non-negotiables" with regard to GCV development.

Capacity, he said, means "a requirement to deliver the entire infantry squad on a single platform." The force-protection requirement is separate from vehicle survivability, he said, but rather is about ensuring safety for Soldiers.

"(It's) a force-protection requirement that links to ensuring that the infantry squad is in fact delivered and is not taken out because the vehicle does not have the requisite protection to ensure the squad members and the crew of the vehicle are able to accomplish their mission," Smith said.

"Full-spectrum operations" means the vehicle must be able to perform missions that include both offensive and defensive operations, as well as stability operations.

"From an operational perspective, (that) means I have to have modular and scalable capabilities," he said. Smith added that the vehicle must include "a whole suite of things to allow me to adapt the platform to accomplish the mission in a wide variety of environments and terrain sets."

Timing, Smith said, means ensuring the vehicle is developed in time to ensure the end product is still valid for the mission.

"If we take too long to develop something, then by the time we have the optimized solution, the environment has changed so significantly that that solution is no longer useful," he said.

Cost is another significant element in GCV development and will play a key role in the RFP when it is released.

"Our intent for this RFP is to give them a target range and to use that as part of assessing their proposals and making a determination -- among other factors, certainly -- who ultimately will be selected," DiMarco said.

The colonel said a specific price range for manufacture would be specified in the RFP, though he was unable to say what that range would be.

DiMarco also said the RFP would focus more on vehicle performance, rather than technology, allowing industry more flexibility to develop their own solutions for meeting the Army's needs. But to help with that, he said, the Army will again make available to industry research that was done in development of the MGV, formally part of FCS.

"We provided industry with access to I think what we called the 'MGV body of knowledge,'" he said. "That was a compilation of information about things that we did under the FCS MGV program. I believe it's still our intent to provide that body of knowledge to industry again."

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Army’s Poor Track Record on Armored Vehicle Modernization Has a Silver Lining

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued October 5, 2010)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

If you were a betting person, what chances would you give the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program of actually producing a new system?

The GCV is the Army’s attempt to salvage something from the debacle of the Future Combat System program which was sought to create a futuristic system-of-systems involving upwards of eighteen manned and unmanned, ground and air vehicles. When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cancelled the FCS program back in 2009 he tossed the Army a bone by protecting the money for a new manned armored combat vehicle if it could be fielded within five to seven years.

The Army responded with a request for proposals (RFP) for the GCV which it said would be a replacement for the venerable Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Then, last August, the RFP was withdrawn when an internal review strongly suggested that the Army’s requirements for its new vehicle could not be attained within the desired time frame or at reasonable cost. The Army has promised to publish a new RFP sometime this month.

In making your bet would it help to know that over the past thirty years the Army has started and cancelled no fewer than eight major armored combat vehicle modernization programs? Count them: the Armored Family of Vehicles, Line-of-Sight Anti-Tank with its kinetic energy missile, Armored Gun System, Armored System Modernization, Future Scout Vehicle, Crusader, Future Combat System and Non-Line-of-Sight System-Cannon. The MRAP and M-ATV programs do not count because they are not combat vehicles.

The Army’s record when it comes to armored vehicle programs is one almost unblemished by success.

The Army’s sole successful armored vehicle program for the past thirty years is the Stryker. This is ironic since Stryker was supposed to be a limited production, interim program on the way to the Future Combat System. The Stryker comes in a number of variants only some of which arguably constitute fighting vehicles. The Stryker platform is based on an earlier armored vehicle design, although the current Stryker has been substantially enhanced, including with new survivability upgrades. Stryker brigade combat teams have proven their worth over and over again in Iraq and now Afghanistan due both to the unique character of the vehicles and also to the brigades’ unusual organization.

The Army’s current fleet of armored combat systems consists largely of vehicles designed in the 1960s and 1970s. These include the M-1 Abrams, the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, the Paladin self-propelled artillery system and the venerable (some would say obsolete) M-113s. The Abrams and Bradleys have gone through several extensive upgrade programs including current survivability enhancements to defeat current threats. Both remain the world’s premier armored fighting vehicles.

A one-for-nine score in modernization programs does not bode well for the GCV. Nor does the fact that the Army is trying to design a vehicle to cover the range of potential future contingencies it may confront from protracted stability and counterinsurgency operations all the way to intensive combined arms combat against a peer competitor. The Abrams, Bradley, Paladin and even Stryker were all designed for conflicts that never happened. Yet, they have all proven their effectiveness in the wars that the Army has been fighting.

There is a good news story behind the Army’s abysmal track record on armored vehicle modernization. This is the fact that time and time again industry has responded successfully to the Army’s changing conception of its future vehicle requirements. In some cases a number of vehicles were actually produced.

Even on GCV, the three industry teams are reported to have responded to the requirements set out in the RFP and produced credible designs, including one by BAE Systems that has an innovative hybrid electric drive system. The problem has not been with industry but with its customer, the Army.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

GCV May Decide Fate Of Army Tracked Vehicles

Oct 14, 2010

By Mike Fabey

By putting its $40-billion ground combat vehicle (GCV) procurement plan on hold, the U.S. Army is giving itself a breather to come up with a new strategy for its ground vehicle force.

The Army canceled the GCV request for proposal (RFP) this summer and froze funding and development for all major ground-vehicle programs—even Block 2 work on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which the GCV is supposed to replace.

Army ground programs—particularly the GCV—are victims of the Pentagon’s obsession with reviewing and revamping the Defense Department procurement mindset for big-dollar programs. The Army and Pentagon also want to put the brakes on the service’s ground-vehicle programs to ensure it buys the right equipment for the mission. The Army and Defense Department are analyzing whether they are buying—even developing—the right vehicle for the job. Indeed, the military could move away from tracked vehicles, except for specific missions.

“Tracked vehicles are not necessarily the best option for what we plan to be doing,” says John Gresham, a defense analyst and author of books on military equipment and operations. That would be a point of departure for the Army, whose doctrine and checkbook has heavily favored tracked vehicles.

The Pentagon reported about $13.7 billion in transactions for those vehicles in 2008, a 57% increase from 2007, according to an analysis of data provided by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. Procurement of those vehicles ranked 10th in Pentagon expenses in 2009 and second in 2008, racking up $16.8 billion in contracts and modifications, the analysis shows.

Two trends, though, have Army and Pentagon strategists rethinking their reliance on tracked vehicles—the failure of the vehicles to survive improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the success of wheeled Strykers in different combat situations.

The Army beefed up Bradleys and other tracked vehicles to withstand IED blasts, changes that took away some speed and mobility. With development of the GCV, the Army hoped to regain some of the lost traits for its main tracked troop carrier.

BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman were proposing a hybrid-electric-drive model. Teams led by General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin and SAIC/Boeing offered more traditional designs. But the Army and Pentagon believe the GCV offerings were still risky, wishing instead “to rely on mature technologies to reduce significant developmental risk over a seven-year schedule following the initial contract award,” the service said.

The cancellation came after a review conducted by the Army and the Defense under secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, as part of a continuing effort to ensure that Army acquisitions effectively and affordably meet the needs of soldiers, the Army said. The review included an “examination of vehicle capabilities, operational needs, acquisition strategy, program schedule and technology readiness.”

The contract cancellation was made at the earliest stage of the acquisition process, the Army said, and the resulting delay “will best ensure the long-term success of the GCV program by better aligning vehicle capabilities with the anticipated needs of future combat operations.”

One source says the reason the service pulled back its RFP was because it feared contractors had been asked to include too many features, which could delay fielding while raising costs.

The Army stands to recover some of the Bradley’s performance with the BAE Block 2 plans. While those are on hold pending the review of the GCV and other ground systems, most agree the Army will move ahead with Bradley enhancements.

BAE is looking to ramp up power in the vehicle for its electronic systems, give it more ground clearance and regain some speed, says Roy Perkins, company director of U.S. Combat Systems Business Development for the heavy brigade combat team.

The Army has been willing to invest in Bradley work, spending or obligating itself for more than $1 billion in contracts and contract modifications for vehicle programs in 2008 and 2009. The Army reportedly needs to keep its existing vehicles up to date as a hedge against problems in fielding better equipment.

With an advanced Bradley in the works to tackle the necessary tracked vehicle missions, the Army is free to better assess whether it needs to spend $40 billion for a next-generation tracked combat troop carrier, or whether that mission can be answered through a modified Stryker. “Except for extreme terrain,” Gresham says, “the Stryker can handle the work.”

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army Aiming to Release Ground Combat Vehicle Request

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 25 Oct 2010 17:56

The U.S. Army still aims to release its Request for Proposals for the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program close to the original 60-day deadline that was announced when the old request was canceled in August, according to the Army chief of staff.

"I think we'll be pretty close to that," said Gen. George Casey during a news briefing with reporters at the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army.

Army Secretary John McHugh echoed him, saying, "I, at this point, feel relatively comfortable that we'll be in a reasonable area around that window."

Read more: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4969898&c=AME&s=TOP

[buglerbilly]

US Army sees new rules for combat vehicles soon

Written by Reuters

Monday, 25 October 2010 09:58

The US Army plans to release new rules soon for a more affordable ground combat vehicle after abruptly canceling the multibillion dollar competition in late August, a top Army general said.

"We're trying to get it out as fast as we can," said Lieutenant General Michael Vane, who heads the Army Capabilities Integration Center.

The Army announced on Aug. 25 that it would issue a new request for proposals within 60 days, but it may miss that target date.

Vane declined to forecast exactly when the new competition terms would be released, but he did not believe the bidders wasted their time with earlier proposals.

A draft capability development document released earlier this month had not changed significantly, Vane said in a telephone interview.

"Where we are eventually headed is in many ways very similar," he said.

The prime contractors bidding for the program are Science Applications International Corp, Britain's BAE Systems Plc and General Dynamics Corp. Their subcontractors include many of the largest US defence contractors, such as Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Raytheon Co.

Linda Hudson, chief executive of the US unit of BAE Systems, said last week she was frustrated with the Army's handling of the competition, noting that dozens of BAE employees had spent months preparing a proposal at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

Vane said the work done by BAE and other companies would still be relevant for the new competition.

He declined to give any specific details on the new request, but said the Army was narrowing the options it was looking for, while still trying to give industry leeway to offers solutions within that range.

He said the work being done on the program would make the new infantry vehicle more affordable, allow it to move into testing faster and should provide much better insight into costs. The new approach could well serve as a model for other Army and Pentagon programs, he said.
Vane said the Army was trying to be responsive to a push by Defence Secretary Robert Gates to cut $100 billion from the Pentagon budget in overhead and low priority programs.

He said one way to save money might be to "buy fewer things more often," noting that shorter contracts would help make the Army more agile in responding to rapidly evolving threats and allow better integration of new technology.

He acknowledged that acquisition officials were often focused on long-range planning to ensure economic order quantities that could help drive prices down, but providing consistent funding would still offer benefits to industry.

"We're not that successful in long-range programs in getting them out quickly," Vane said, noting there was growing recognition now of the need to adopt more agile and flexible procurement processes.

[buglerbilly]

BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman Add iRobot to Ground Combat Vehicle Team

(Source: BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman Corp. and iRobot Corp.; issued October 26, 2010)

ARLINGTON, Va. --- BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman today announced they have added iRobot Corp. to their Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) team in their bid for the U.S. Army’s GCV competition.

"The addition of iRobot to our team strengthens and promotes the unmanned components of the GCV program," said Mark Signorelli, BAE Systems vice president and general manager of Ground Combat Vehicle. "Collectively we bring the proven experience, the latest technology and cultures of innovation and service to the Army's GCV program.”

iRobot Corporation will serve as the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) integrator and enhance the capability to detect pedestrians and obstacles of interest with growth towards an autonomous driving capability for the GCV. iRobot will also be responsible for integration of the U.S. Army’s Brigade Combat Team modernization program Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV) robotic platform so that it can be operated from inside the GCV.

"We are very pleased to be a member of the BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman GCV team," said Robert Moses, president of iRobot’s Government and Industrial Robots division. "Together we offer extensive experience in combat platform production and robotics integration capabilities to the GCV program. The GCV is an extremely important program for the Army and today’s soldier. We are proud to be part of a team that looks to develop the U.S. Army’s next generation combat vehicle.”

BAE Systems is the prime contractor for the team. It is the world's largest producer of combat vehicles, having fielded more than any other company in the world. The company is the top supplier to the U.S. Army's Heavy Brigades, one of the largest suppliers to the U.S. Department of Defense and the second largest defense company in the world.

The GCV program is a development effort headed by the U.S. Army and is designed to develop the next generation Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

BAE Systems is a global defense, security and aerospace company with approximately 107,000 employees worldwide. The Company delivers a full range of products and services for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced electronics, security, information technology solutions and customer support services. In 2009 BAE Systems reported sales of £22.4 billion (US $36.2 billion).

Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.

iRobot designs and builds robots that make a difference. The company’s home robots help people with smarter ways to clean, and its government and industrial robots protect those in harm’s way. iRobot’s consumer and military robots feature iRobot Aware® robot intelligence systems, proprietary technology incorporating advanced concepts in navigation, mobility, manipulation and artificial intelligence.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

BAE Sticking With Hybrid Drive For GCV Bid

Oct 27, 2010

By Michael Fabey

With the U.S. Army poised this week to release the revamped request for proposals (RFP) for its $40 billion Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) replacement program for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, BAE Systems is still counting on its hybrid-drive design to win over buyers despite its perceived risks.

The biggest risk factor, BAE officials say, will be the company’s success or failure in persuading the Army that the hybrid-drive system is proven technology that powers vehicles across a spectrum of industries.

“We’re going to have to communicate to the Army to talk about what are the real risks,” says Mark Signorelli, vice president and general manager of Ground Combat Vehicles at BAE Systems.

Other teams led by General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin and SAIC/Boeing offered more traditional designs. But the Army and the Pentagon felt all of the GCV proposals were still too risky and earlier this year canceled the original RFP to craft a new one that would “rely on mature technologies in order to reduce significant developmental risk over a seven-year schedule following the initial contract award” (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 26).

“The refined RFP will result in a vehicle that provides soldiers with critical armored protection in the modern combat environment,” the Army said.

Hybrid drive is a “mature” technology and BAE should not be discounted for incorporating it as part of its GCV offer, Signorelli says. “It’s central to our offer.”

He again contends the hybrid-electric system would meet the power requirements and other needs of the vehicle. “We went to the hybrid electric because of the performance requirements,” he says.

While some of the initial requirements are bound to change with a new RFP, Signorelli says a hybrid-drive design would still provide the best integrated platform, with room to grow with additional requirements as needed.

The system also would be easier to maintain, he asserts, and require a less burdensome logistics-support chain.

The cancellation of the original RFP came after a review conducted by both the service and the Pentagon’s acquisition office “as part of a continuing effort to ensure that all Army acquisitions effectively and affordably meet the needs of our soldiers,” the Army said.

The “holistic” review included an “examination of vehicle capabilities, operational needs, the acquisition strategy, program schedule and technology readiness,” according to the service.

The contract cancellation was made at the earliest stage of the process, the Army said, and the resulting delay “will best ensure the long-term success of the Ground Combat Vehicle program by better aligning vehicle capabilities with the anticipated needs of future combat operations.”

[buglerbilly]

New GCV RFP Will Feature Tiered Approach

Nov 3, 2010

By Michael Fabey

The revamped request for proposals (RFP) for the U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) is “imminent” and will focus more on engineering and manufacturing and less on technology development while giving contractors the option of trading off some cost and capability elements for later increments, spokesman Paul Mehney says.

The Army canceled the original RFP for the $40 billion GCV program in late August in favor of crafting a new one that would “rely on mature technologies in order to reduce significant developmental risk over a seven-year schedule following the initial contract award,” the service said at the time. “The refined RFP will result in a vehicle that provides soldiers with critical armored protection in the modern combat environment” (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 26).

The RFP contains four top priorities, Mehney tells AVIATION WEEK. The first is for the program to deliver a model tailored for force protection. The second is to begin production within seven years. The other two priorities for the GCV will be to guarantee capacity for a nine-man infantry squad and to operate in a full spectrum of missions .

The four priorities represent a significantly truncated capability set in comparison to the service’s initial vision. But the Army fears “contractors had been asked to include too many features – a problem that could delay fielding while raising costs,” Lexington Institute defense analyst Loren Thompson writes in a recent brief.

The new RFP will emphasize a three-tiered approach for contractors to design a vehicle that offers the Army the best mix of cost and capability in both early models and later increments, according to Mehney. The first tier, he says, will include the Army’s “must-have” capabilities that will leave little wiggle room for contractor compliance. Those capabilities will be spelled out in the RFP. The second tier will allow contractors to offer trade-offs in capabilities to reduce costs.

For third-tier requirements, Mehney says, contractors have the option to defer some of the capabilities until future increments, depending on affordability and the Army’s assessment of the contractor’s ability to deliver.

“This is a big change in the RFP,” Mehney says. The idea is to cut down on the technological risk, shorten technology development and increase the engineering and manufacturing phase to create more prototypes and get the vehicles into the field for use by soldiers as soon as possible.

The new RFP also will be setting a price cap of $9 million to $11.5 million per copy, Mehney says.

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Army Issues New Guidelines for Ground Combat Vehicle Program

Posted by Paul McLeary at 11/30/2010 1:12 PM CST

The U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle Project Manager Col. Andrew DiMarco told reporters this morning that the Army is looking at “a target range of $9 million to $10.5 million” average unit manufacturing cost for the GCV, billed as the Army’s replacement for the aging M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Scheduled to be completed by 2017, the Army expects to start a buy of 1,874 GCV Infantry Fighting Vehicles around that time.

DiMarco was speaking to announce the rollout of the second Request for Proposals to industry, (the first one went out in February 2010), which was released this morning. After putting the program on hold in August with the promise to issue a new RFP within 60 days, the Army missed its target by about a month, but DiMarco said that the service is still on track to award up to three contracts for the Technology Development phase in April 2011.

Proposals from industry are due on the 21st of January, he said, which shouldn't be a problem since three contractor teams have long since linked up to try and win the contract: BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman; General Dynamics Land Systems along with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon; and SAIC-led team that includes Boeing, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, and Rheinmetall.

“We did not have affordability targets” in the first RFP, DiMarco said, but due to the new fiscally-conscious times, the new RFP does include such targets, such as capping each technology development contract at a ceiling of $450 million for each contractor under a fixed-price incentive contract, and if any competitor goes over that limit, that money comes out of their own pocket. The Army is also looking for costs of about $200 per operating mile, which DiMarco explained is “an initial target which we will refine as we go through the [technology development] phase.” Comparatively, Bradleys are about 100 dollars per operating mile, while the Abrams tank is closer to $300 per operating mile.

[buglerbilly]

More info on this............

US Army 'Re-Releases' GCV RFP

November 30, 2010

The US Army has 're-released' its request for proposals (RFP) for the Technology Development (TD) phase for a new Infantry Fighting Vehicle today under the Ground Combat Vehicle programme. The army anticipates awarding “up to three” contracts for the planned 24 month TD phase in the early third quarter of 2011.

The new RFP follows the 25 August 2010 cancellation of the original solicitation for GCV.

“The Ground Combat Vehicle operational requirement is grounded in a requirement for army forces to conduct full spectrum operations,” explains Michael Smith, Mounted Concepts and Requirements Development representative from the US Army Maneuver Center of Excellence. Speaking to a media briefing immediately following the RFP release he elaborated, “Those include: simultaneous offence, defence, stability and support across the entire spectrum of conflict. This has driven the need for an infantry fighting vehicle that’s versatile and adaptable, through configuration changes, to allow us to adapt ‘on the fly’ in an operational theatre as needed and have the potential to maintain growth in terms of size, weight, power, and cooling – because we have run up against that in current operations with the equipment that we have had to adapt onto current platforms.”

The IFV itself reflects the need to deliver an infantry squad of “nine combat-loaded soldiers to a position of advantage on the battlefield.”

Reflecting on programmatic thinking underlying the new RFP, US Army Ground Combat Vehicle Project Manager, Col Andrew DiMarco observed, “We were planning on [releasing the RFP] a number of months ago but over the last ‘three plus’ months we spent time both internal to the army…as well as folks in OSD, in particular AT&L [Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics] in revising the strategy as well as the corresponding RFP from when we cancelled the initial one.”

“What’s different this time is that we have given industry the opportunity to explore trade space,” he said. “We’ve given them some very discrete hard requirements for: squad size; for elements of force protection; full spectrum; focusing on growth and open systems; as well as a seven year timeline to the first production vehicle…In fact, a number of requirements that were previously considered equal are now in trade space and we are allowing contractors to come back and propose to us the best solution from their perspective, again within a competitive environment, to answer our requirements and how we prioritized them.”

Significantly, the new RFP provides affordability targets in two areas. One target provides a window of $9 million – $ 10.5 million (USD) for (FY 2010 dollars) for “average unit manufacturing cost.” The second provides a preliminary life cycle objective of $200 (USD) per operating mile.

Cautioning that the second figure was “an initial target which we will refine as we go through the TD phase,” DiMarco added, “[Contractors] will use [those figures] as part of the trade space to balance the solutions and proposals that they bring to the table.”

Delivery of the first production vehicle is expected within seven years of the initial contract award. Although no formal Army Acquisition Objective has been finalised at this time, the army has stated an initial identified requirement for 1874 infantry fighting vehicles.

The IFV will be developed in three phases commencing after the initial contract award: Technology Development, Engineering and Manufacturing Development, and Production and Deployment.

By Scott R. Gourley, Orlando

[buglerbilly]

Army Issues RFP for Ground Combat Vehicle

(Source: US Army; issued Dec. 1, 2010)

WASHINGTON --- Force protection against a classified list of threats, a nine-Soldier capacity, full-spectrum-operations capability and on-time delivery within seven years are among the "big four" imperatives the Army has spelled out for those hoping to be selected to build the ground combat vehicle.

The Army took the next step toward providing a ground combat vehicle for infantry soldiers, Nov. 30, when it issued a request for proposal for the project. Industry has until Jan. 21 to submit proposals.

The four imperatives, said Col. Andrew DiMarco, program manager for Ground Combat Vehicle, are "non-negotiable."

"The vehicle has to be capable of carrying the nine-Soldier squad," he said. "And then on full spectrum, we have a series of growth requirements and we have some open architecture requirements that are non-negotiable."

While the GCV program is expected to eventually produce multiple vehicles with varying capabilities, the focus for the first block of GCV development is an infantry combat vehicle.

Also in the RFP are affordability targets for the GCV. Among those are a per-unit cost for the vehicle between $9 and $10.5 million. Also a cost target is an operation and sustainment cost of $200 per operational mile. Both sets of numbers are in fiscal year 2010 dollars.

Not in the RFP: requirements spelling out how the GCV moves along the ground.

"I have no requirement that says track or wheel," said Michael N. Smith, director of the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, who added that a "track vs. wheel is a specious discussion." Smith did say there are requirements in the RFP to fit the GCV on a C-17, but not onto a C-130.

It's expected that by April 2011, the Army will reach milestone decision A on the GCV and will award technology-development contracts to three contractors. The TD phase of development lasts 24 months. The early prototype vehicle is expected by the middle of fiscal year 2014, and the first full-up prototype is expected by the beginning of fiscal year 2016.

DiMarco said the Army has initially planned for 1,874 GCVs. The first production GCV should roll off the assembly line in early April 2018 -- seven years from the award of the TD-phase contracts. The first unit should be equipped with GCVs in 2019, he said.

After the Manned Ground Vehicle component was cut from the Army's Future Combat Systems program in June 2009, the Army moved quickly to develop a new vehicle -- the Ground Combat Vehicle. The program previously released an RFP in February 2010, but that RFP was ultimately cancelled in August. The RFP released Nov. 30 is the replacement.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Army Vehicle Solicitation: A Clear Signal Contractors Need to Consider Diversification

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued December 1, 2010)

If the bleak findings of the bipartisan deficit reduction commission released today weren't enough to get defense contractors thinking about diversification, then maybe the Army's revised solicitation for a future Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) will do the trick.

GCV is all that's left of the family of networked combat vehicles conceived under the canceled Future Combat Systems program. The bold vision of an agile, net-centric combat fleet has given way to more prosaic plans for a well-protected vehicle that can carry an entire nine-man squad and be fielded in seven years. Of course it won't be, but Army modernization planners usually rotate out of their jobs before experience undermines their optimism.

What industry and the investment community are noticing about the revised solicitation is that instead of being structured as a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, it is a fixed-price-incentive-fee contract. Fixed-price contracts are a reasonable approach to the serial production of mature systems, but in this case the Army proposes to use an inflexible contracting vehicle for the high-risk technology development phase of a program in which there is considerable "trade space" for competing design concepts.

Any cost overruns would have to be absorbed entirely by the contractor -- despite a high likelihood the service will make changes as the effort progresses that contractors cannot anticipate when they prepare their initial proposals. Add to that the fact that three highly qualified teams will likely be competing aggressively to win and execute development contracts, and you have a prescription for somebody losing a lot of money.

Not that the Army doesn't understand incentives. It will allow contractors who spend less than their allotted funding to keep a princely 20 percent of the savings.

Nonetheless, some analysts think the Ground Combat Vehicle solicitation sounds pretty risky. Goldman Sachs put out a note commenting, "We believe this clearly supports our continued view that defense company margins are at peak levels and are likely to decline as the Pentagon shifts risk from the customer to the contractors, and that consensus estimates are too high."

By the way, did I mention the projected unit cost for the vehicle, about $10 million each, is so high that the program is sure to be politically controversial and therefore suffer much the same fate the Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle has? You know -- a series of cuts to the production goal that eventually make the unit cost look so astronomical the program ends up being killed (but only after billions of dollars have been wasted).

My point here isn't that we need to introduce market-based reforms into the defense acquisition system or implement some other process change before another weapons program crashes and burns. No structural adjustment will change the fact that the Pentagon procurement system is run by a collection of academics, bureaucrats and warfighters who have little grasp of the business world.

My point is that defense companies need to start thinking seriously about diversifying their product mix away from a capricious government customer. Diversification is the "D" word defense investors are loathe to voice, but look at what General Dynamics accomplished by its foray into business jets and you begin to see a way forward for defense companies in what could be a very bleak decade.

The message of the revised GCV solicitation to military contractors is that it is time to reduce their exposure to a customer that will never understand what it takes to survive in today's unforgiving capital markets and investment climate.

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[buglerbilly]

Is A New Combat Vehicle What The Army Needs Most?

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued December 8, 2010)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

Last week the U.S. Army released its revised request for proposal (RFP) for the new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). The initial proposal had been criticized as dictating too many key performance parameters which resulted, according to reports, in industry responses that were deemed technically risky and excessively costly.

The new RFP has only four key performance parameters for the new vehicle: ability to carry a nine man squad; force protection; the ability to conduct the full spectrum of operations (meaning it must be able to carry offensive weapons too) and; growth potential and open systems. There are 38 other performance parameters that are part of the “trade space” in designing a vehicle.

Overall, both the old and new RFPs are based on the Army’s view that it must be able to dominate close engagements of every type from a standup fight with opposing armored forces to counterinsurgency actions, stability operations and information warfare. According to a senior Army spokesman, “this has driven the need for an infantry fighting vehicle that’s versatile and adaptable, through configuration changes, to allow us to adapt ‘on the fly’ in an operational theatre as needed and have the potential to maintain growth in terms of size, weight, power, and cooling.” Just to make the effort a little “sporty,” responders to the RFP only have seven years to design and develop this new vehicle, must not breach a specified cost ceiling and have to agree to a firm fixed price contract.

But the larger question is not whether the Army’s vision of the GCV makes sense or even, given concerns from industry, whether the RFP is properly structured, but whether the Army should be focusing at all on a new ground combat vehicle.

The Army faces imminent challenges that would seem to make the subject of a new squad-carrying combat vehicle of secondary importance. According to the U.S Army’s new Operating Concept, the major new challenges include: increasing uncertainty in the future operational environment; adversaries that will be able to achieve tactical, operational, and strategic surprise; state and non-state actors that will have sophisticated capabilities; operating environments where land, air, space, maritime and cyberspace superiority is increasingly contested; the increasing likelihood of anti-access and area denial challenge, operational denial, and tactical overmatch; a limited ability by U.S. forces to overcome anti-access and area denial capabilities, deploy into austere locations, and sustain operations in immature theaters.

While there is value to be had in a highly survivable vehicle that can transport an entire infantry squad while also carrying “heavy” weapons, such a capability does not seem to address the Army’s biggest challenges. In fact, building another massive, fifty to seventy ton vehicle does not seem the right solution to the problem of deploying into austere locations and sustaining operations in immature theaters.

But even if it were, the dominant problem for the Army is not how to get a nine man squad from a Forward Operating Base to the scene of a tactical engagement but whether it will be able to conduct expeditionary warfare in the future or operate in a high-intensity threat environment.

One of the key areas in need of attention is air and missile defenses. The Army is acquiring more Patriot batteries and is beginning to deploy the even more capable THAAD system. This may not be enough in the face of the long-range ballistic missiles being fielded by China, Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah.

Then there is the proliferation of rockets, artillery and mortars. The Army has finally begun to acknowledge the need to acquire counter-rocket and counter-mortar attack capabilities.

Apparently, Army leaders are starting to receive operational need statements regarding capabilities to counter unmanned aerial systems. Providing counters to asymmetric anti-access and area denial threats would appear to be a higher priority than a big armored truck (with a gun or missile on top, of course).

Another priority area for investment by the Army ought to be precision strike. The Army spent a lot of money on systems such as Excalibur to achieve near-certainty of a first round hit. But it cut back on its estimates of how many rounds it would require. The Army is moving forward with a precision mortar round to support forces in low-intensity operations.

But looking to the challenge of full spectrum operations particularly in complex and urban terrain, the Army must anticipate large-scale firefights and artillery “duels” with very challenging requirements for avoidance of collateral damage and suppression of enemy fires. This suggests a lot of investment in both ISR and very precise, very small rounds. While I am on the subject of improvement to fires, perhaps the Army ought to make the replacement of its venerable Paladin self-propelled artillery a priority. It has already tried and failed twice (Crusader and NLOS-C) to accomplish this objective.

Then there is the ever-important area of networks. The Army is looking to create a seamless network for mounted and dismounted forces. Recent reports suggest that the Army would like to equip every soldier with the equivalent of a 3G or 4G cell phone. While the re-released Ground Combat Vehicle RFP could be the start of a revolution in how the Army develops requirements and acquires weapons systems it may not be the right place to invest lots of scarce resources.

The Army already has a massive fleet of armored combat systems virtually all of which can or are being modernized. The opportunity costs of investing in another ground combat system seem to be just too high at this point in time.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: European armies have developed a wide range of modern, large and well-armored wheeled infantry combat vehicles ranging from the Dutch-German Boxer to the French VBCI and the Finnish AMV as well as Germany’s Puma tracked IFV.
It would be very surprising if none of these vehicles met the US Army’s GCV requirements; they also offer the advantage of being fully developed and in production at defined costs.
Buying an existing vehicle instead of developing the GCV would free funds to pay for other new equipment the Army needs.)

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[buglerbilly]

Army Outlines Ground Combat Vehicle RFP

(Source: US Army; dated Dec. 20, web-posted Dec. 21, 2010)

ARLINGTON, Va. --- The Army plans to build a versatile, highly capable Ground Combat Vehicle in seven years that can deliver a nine-man squad under armor, across a full spectrum of military operations and protect against mines, IEDs, RPGs and a host of other threats, service leaders told members of industry Dec. 18 at a GCV pre-proposal conference in Dearborn, Mich.

"The Ground Combat Vehicle represents the centerpiece of the Army's long-term combat vehicle modernization strategy," said Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli.

"In the Request for Proposal, we clearly define our big four priorities: force protection, capacity, full-spectrum operations, timing ... all based on the immediate need of size, weight and power," he said.

A key rationale for the conference was to afford an open dialogue between Army developers and their industry partners in order to answer questions and clearly define the parameters of the RFP.

"We must ensure we deliver a vehicle that provides a much-needed capability on time and on budget. Your (industry partners) input is critical to our success. We want to make sure we address any outstanding requests you have regarding the RFP," Chiarelli said.

Industry bidders have until Jan. 21 to submit proposals. The Army plans to award up to three 24-month technology demonstration contracts. The TD phase will include three major reviews, according to the RFP: a System Requirements Review, System Functional Review and a Preliminary Design Review.

The RFP outlines the need for mature technology and clear cost goals; the RFP states that the government intends to hit a target unit manufacturing cost of $9-10.5 million per vehicle with operational sustainment costs of $200 per mile, Chiarelli said. "All of this should be achieved without exceeding a contract ceiling of $450 million dollars," he added.

"Let me be clear, this is not to reduce contractor profitability, but rather to reduce costs and improve performance. We want to encourage creativity and innovation in today's environment," Chiarelli added.

The RFP calls for a "tiering" of requirements designed to provide industry with trade space or technological flexibility.

"Tiering supports trade space so that industry can balance cost schedule and technical risk in order to achieve the goal of delivering a vehicle in seven years" said Col. Andrew DiMarco, program manager, Ground Combat Vehicle.

During the conference, Army experts and program mangers provided industry-specific and detailed answers to a range of questions regarding the RFP. In total, Army experts provided answers to more than 200 questions.

"I'm looking forward to seeing the proposals come in January," DiMarco said.

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[buglerbilly]

Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems Withdraws from Ground Combat Vehicle Program Competition

(Source: Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems; issued January 18, 2011)

Whilst I have sincere doubts ADVS could ever get close to this contract and fer sure they would have to get into bed with a major manufacturing partner, their comments I have highlighted below are pretty on the mark................in my opinion of course!

LAKE ORION, Mich. --- Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems (ADVS) has recently decided to withdraw as a competitor for the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Program. The GCV Program is the Army's initiative to develop an armored vehicle that will improve survivability and increase fighting capability beyond that of the current arsenal. Under the current program, the contracting efforts have been divided into three stages. The first stage will not require producing a prototype demonstration vehicle and, in fact, the Army will wait a total of seven years to field a weapon system.

After reviewing the Army's continuing GCV strategy, ADVS has decided to withdraw from the competition. According to ADVS' CEO, James LeBlanc, Sr., "This drawn-out Army process does not fit with ADVS' rapid development and fielding capabilities." For the initial development stage, the Army is willing to spend up to $450 million per contract awarded; which could total up to $1.35 billion. ADVS has shown with similar combat armored vehicles for foreign military use and with other major weapon system contracts that they can design, develop, integrate, prototype and field such an advanced system in one to two years.

ADVS focuses on survivable vehicles that meet customer requirements to rigid specifications at a reasonable development cost, to be fielded rapidly and to protect the soldiers today and in the future. Just recently, ADVS delivered the first production of the ADVS 6x6x6 Desert Chameleon armored personnel carriers to the Kuwait Ministry of Interior (KMOI). ADVS began discussions with the KMOI in 2007 to design a security vehicle that is able to meet their specific mobility, survivability, and performance requirements and customer budget. ADVS designed, manufactured, tested, and completed the vehicles for delivery by fall 2010, a less-than three-year full development to production timeline duration.

While ADVS supports the Army's concept, they encourage the U.S. Department of Defense to review the ADVS strategies and past performance and consider ways of developing and fielding vehicles quicker and more economically. Such a rapid process is counter to the current GCV strategy; though supportive of the philosophy of Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

ADVS specializes in designing, engineering and manufacturing defense vehicles for current and future requirements of the military, homeland defense, and national security markets. ADVS and their principals have been working with the U.S. and international governments for over 40 years in the development of security and tactical vehicles. ADVS also provides program management, field service, logistics, training, manual support, and spare parts for tactical vehicles. ADVS' innovative vehicle product features plus extensive experience contributes highly to mission efficiency and increased survivability.

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[buglerbilly]

Three GCV Bids In; Did Army Get It Right?

By John Reed Friday, January 21st, 2011 5:53 pm

And the bids are in for the U.S. Army’s latest effort to field a Ground Combat Vehicle to replace its aging Bradley fighting vehicles, with BAE Systems, General Dynamics and SAIC-led teams entering the fray.

BAE is offering a brand new design, powered by a hybrid electric drive, that the company claims will be the “first combat vehicle designed from the ground-up to meet the current IED-threat environment.”

Meanwhile, the SAIC team, which is calling itself Team Full Spectrum, is offering a version of the German Puma infantry fighting vehicle, the same product it offered in the previous GCV contest.

General Dynamics is also bidding.

In April, the Army will award up to three contracts totaling no more that $450 million each for the bidders to tweak their offerings and come up with the best possible design. Bids were due today.

After 24 months of technology development, the service will pick up to two competitors to continue a four-year engineering, manufacturing development effort, after which the service will choose a winner to build 1,874 of the IFVs. Those vehicles are currently projected to cost $9 million to $10.5 million apiece, not including the cost of spare parts and other support items.

The Army also wants the vehicles to cost $200 per operating mile. This falls between the $100 per mile of the Bradley and the $300 per mile of the M1 Abrams tank.

The last effort to field the GCV was cancelled last year after service officials decided the RFP called for a vehicle that didn’t match up with the Army’s needs.

The service kicked off a revised competition to replace its Bradleys in November, calling for an armored vehicle that can do everything from counterinsurgency ops to armored warfare.

A source who is closely watching the competition had careful praise for the Army’s efforts this time, saying they appeared to have gotten the acquisition piece down, performing a complete turnaround from the FCS contract by offering clear goals and terms. The requirements side received less praise. The most interesting vehicle to watch, this source said, is BAE’s offering. GD may be offering the product with the least risk. Of course, it’s all very early in the process.

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/01/21/three-gcv-bids-in-did-army-get-it-right/#ixzz1BiSkmrwX

[buglerbilly]

Can the Ground Combat Vehicle Really Rise from the Ashes of FCS?

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued January 25, 2011)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

Jeezus Lexington its stretching it a bit even for you to include Humvees and Trucks as a reason for GCV...............:razz

Pretty soon the Army’s only hope of salvaging anything from its ill-fated Future Combat System (FCS) program will rest with the new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). Just last week the Army announced its decision not to equip its combat brigades with the Network Integration Kits which had been intended as a spin-off from the FCS.

This decision comes on top of the Army’s earlier cancellation of efforts to deploy the Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and the Tactical and Urban Unattended Ground Sensors. All three of these capabilities had performed rather poorly in operational testing last year.

As a result, all the Army will have to show for its decade-long, multibillion dollar investment program in FCS will be -- maybe -- the GCV.

Even this, the Army’s last hope, may be in danger. Congress has put a hold on spending for the GCV until it receives a report detailing the analysis of alternatives to a new armored combat vehicle. It appears that Congress is concerned about the vehicle’s reported price tag, between $9 and $10 million a copy or twice that of an upgraded M-1 Abrams tank and five times that of a Stryker wheeled combat vehicle.

Some members of Congress may rightly be worried in the aftermath of the debacle that was the FCS program whether anything useful can emerge from its ashes. All reports indicate that the three teams bidding on the GCV program will be forced by the tight timelines associated with the first phase effort (24 months to deliver a prototype vehicle) to go with existing technology. This means, in essence, using what was developed under FCS.

The Army has insisted that relaxing its requirements and shortening the time frame for delivery of a prototype GCV will rein in the tendency of major programs to push the technological envelope, creating enormous program risk and the likelihood that the cost of development increases astronomically. Of course, if this is the case then why would a vehicle based on proven technologies -- one of the teams is reported to be pushing a slightly enhanced version of a 20 year-old European armored vehicle -- cost so much?

All the Army’s hopes, fears, experiences in two wars and wounds sustained in a host of recent unsuccessful ACAT I programs are now invested in the GCV. That is one reason why the vehicle has to be capable of full spectrum operations. It should be noted that none of the other services has a major weapons platform that is designed to address equally all points along the spectrum conflict.

The Navy is building the Littoral Combat Ship precisely because its existing fleet of destroyers and cruisers is not well suited to operations in that portion of the aqua sphere. The Air Force has its high and lower end fighters, the F-22 and F-35, and is deploying a limited number of light attack aircraft for counterinsurgency operations.

In view of the fact that the Army and Marine Corps have successfully employed a vast fleet of purpose-built armored vehicles to fight the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, including M-1 tanks, Bradleys, MRAPS, M-ATVs, Stryker, up-armored Humvees and even trucks, what is the real value of a single vehicle that spans this entire spectrum of vehicles? And is that additional increment of utility really worth the price tag?

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[buglerbilly]

The Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) and Early Infantry Brigade Combat Team (E-IBCT) Programs: Background and Issues for Congress

(Source: Congressional Research Office; dated Jan. 18, 2011)

In April 2009, Secretary of Defense Gates announced that he intended to significantly restructure the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) program. The FCS was a multiyear, multibillion dollar program that had been underway since 2000 and was at the heart of the Army’s transformation efforts.

In lieu of the cancelled FCS Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV), the Army was directed to develop a Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) that would be relevant across the entire spectrum of Army operations and would incorporate combat lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of the FCS program, the Army had been “spinning out” selected FCS technologies to brigade combat teams (BCTs) that were deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Secretary Gates’s April 2009 restructuring decision included provisions to continue these efforts, and the Army decided that initially these technologies would be provided to Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs); the Army designated this effort as the Early Infantry Brigade Combat Team (E-IBCT) program.

The Army reissued a request for proposal (RFP) for the GCV on November 30, 2010, and plans to begin fielding the GCV by 2015-2017. The first E-IBCT capabilities package (Increment One), consisting of an unmanned aerial and ground vehicle, unattended sensors, and a network integration kit, was tested in September 2009 and demonstrated poor performance and reliability. Because of the test results, Increment One was judged not ready to field and the Army was required to repeat the limited users test in September 2010.

The Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) FY2011 Budget Request for the GCV was $934.3 million for Research, Technology Development and Evaluation (RDT&E) and $682.7 million for procurement. The E-IBCT’s FY2011 budget request was for $1.6 billion for RDT&E. The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) initially recommended fully funding the GCV budget request, but the HASC expressed concerns that the original GCV requirements were too ambitious and urged the Army to take a more incremental approach, noting that the Army needed to conduct a more thorough analysis of alternatives prior to proceeding to the technology development phase.

The Senate Committee on Appropriations Defense Subcommittee recommended providing only $462.1 million, reflecting the likely six-month contract award delay due to the reissue of the RFP. The HASC, concerned about past performance issues with the E-IBCT, recommended cutting $152.7 million in RDT&E and $626.7 million in procurement funding from the FY2011 E-IBCT Increment One budget request.

The SASC recommended $302.4 million for E-IBCT procurement funding, and the Senate Committee on Appropriations Defense Subcommittee recommended a $2 million reduction for the Class I unmanned aerial vehicle and a $12 million reduction for E-IBCT training/logistics/management. Because the Senate did not consider H.R. 5136, the FY2011 National Defense Authorization Act, under normal legislative process, H.R. 6523 was agreed to by the House and Senate in lieu of H.R. 5136 and contains revised authorization language for both the GCV and E-IBCT program. H.R. 6523 became P.L. 111-383 on January 7, 2011.

There are two major force structure-related decisions that could affect these programs. The first is that the Army is considering returning to a division-based structure and adding a third maneuver battalion to heavy brigade combat teams (HBCTs) and IBCTs.

Another issue is the impact of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s January 6, 2011, decision to recommend cutting 27,000 active duty soldiers from the Army force structure, possibly resulting in fewer BCTs.

Additionally, if the GCV and E-IBCT programs prove to be technologically infeasible or too costly, there are alternatives to both programs, primarily through improving current systems.

Click here for the full report (24 pages in PDF format) on the Federation of American Scientists website.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41597.pdf

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[buglerbilly]

Abrams is Model for Army Infantry Carrier

Feb 25, 2011

By Paul McLeary



FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli thinks the M1 Abrams tank is a good model on which to base the service’s upcoming Ground Combat Vehicle, since the Abrams has remained relevant and useful across a range of scenarios even though it has been in service for more than 30 years.

The Abrams “has had incremental builds” while remaining “a platform that still shows great potential for growth,” Chiarelli said Feb. 23 during a speech at the Association of the U.S. Army symposium here.

This modular, elastic approach is one that the GCV infantry carrier plans on adopting in everything from its armor kits to its electronics and communications systems. BAE Systems, General Dynamics and SAIC all are leading industry teams vying for the contract. The GCV is set to be fielded starting in 2017.

“I think we learned the right lessons” from the failed Manned Ground Vehicle, the GCV’s predecessor and one of the failures of the Army’s ambitious Future Combat Systems program, he says.

The GCV’s requirements sheet instructs industry to use only mature technologies to speed production and drive down cost, which is essentially the opposite approach from the one the Army followed in its MGV program.

Meanwhile, U.S. Army testing of modernization technologies at Ft. Bliss, Texas, this year will be “one of the most important things we’ve done in a long time,” since the service now has an entire brigade whose sole purpose is to test and evaluate experimental gear before it is procured, according to Chiarelli.

USMC

[buglerbilly]

Study: Put General In Charge of U.S. Army's GCV

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 25 Feb 2011 15:18

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The U.S. Army appears to be taking seriously a new study that describes problems that plague service acquisition, from writing requirements to full-rate production.

The Army announced it had commissioned the 120-day study last May and asked Gil Decker, a former Army acquisition executive, and retired Gen. Lou Wagner, who served as chief of the Army's Materiel Command, to lead the inquiry.

On the last day here of the Association of the U.S. Army's winter symposium, Wagner ran through the study's recommendations for improving the system. He was not originally on the conference's agenda, but was added after InsideDefense broke news of the study's findings in a Feb. 11 story.

While the study group has clearly outlined the scope of the acquisition problems, it remains to be seen whether its recommendations will lead to the kind of change required.

One of its recommendations is to put a general in charge of the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, currently led by a colonel. GCV and similarly complex acquisition category (ACAT) 1 programs need to have a general in charge, Wagner said.

If it were the Air Force, a three-star would be in charge, Wagner half-joked.

The Army's track record in getting programs out of technology development and into production does not bode well for GCV, planned as a successor to the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. The acquisition process for the entire U.S. military requires scores upon scores of reviews and layers of bureaucracy that can slow things down, but the Army's recent history appears particularly bad.

From 1990 to 2010, the Army terminated 22 major programs, Wagner said. Of course, several of those fell under the umbrella of the multibillion-dollar Future Combat Systems effort, which was canceled in 2009. This has led to a loss of trust by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Congress and industry in the Army's ability to develop good requirements and move a system into production, Wagner said.

The study's recommendations fall into four broad categories:

* Make the requirements process collaborative and timely. This means bringing the key stakeholders in early from across the Army, something the service did do with GCV, Wagner said. For key ACAT 1 programs, the Army should establish a special task force chartered by the chief of staff or the secretary of the Army, Wagner said.

* Manage risk, don't be risk averse.

To this end, Wagner showed a chart that displayed how Army programs were categorized by risk, based on the amount of development work required. A program that intends to develop a system from scratch versus one that plans to upgrade an existing system does not need to go through the same process, Wagner said.

The Army should not undertake developing systems from the ground up unless the system is truly a game-changer, he added.

* Align organizations and accountability. For example, Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier should be renamed PEO Soldier and Small Unit. PEO Combat Support and Combat Service Support, which currently manages more than 500 systems, should be broken up into two offices,

* Provide adequate requirements and acquisition resources. To reduce funding instability, the Army could fence off funds for larger programs or fund them with a "capital account."

Wagner said he has briefed many people in the Pentagon on the study, including Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter.

So far, the feedback has been very positive, he said.

[buglerbilly]

GAO Questions Need for U.S. Army GCV

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 9 Mar 2011 20:44

Before the U.S. Army issues technology development contracts for the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, it needs to answer outstanding questions about the need for the new vehicle, the Government Accountability Office says.

Key questions remain about the urgency of the need for GCV, the analysis of alternatives, the seven-year delivery schedule and whether the vehicle will really use mature technologies only, GAO's Michael Sullivan said during his March 9 testimony before the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces.

The subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., raised similar questions in his opening statement.

"How do we know that the GCV is the full spectrum vehicle that the Army needs," he asked.

Army vice chief Gen. Peter Chiarelli affirmed that it was, saying it will allow for more space, weight and power, which are nearly maxed out on today's vehicles. The vehicle is being designed to be able to take on future technologies as they become available, he said.

The GAO's testimony included new details from the Army GCV Red Team report, which show the Army has also asked if the new vehicle is really needed.

The Army convened the Red Team last year to scour the program's requirements and acquisition strategy. The group's findings led the Army to rescind the original request for proposals in August and release a revised request in November.

In its study, the Red Team considered the urgency of the need for GCV in the next seven years.

Their report concluded "the funds that have migrated from the [Future Combat Systems] program were driving the events and activities of the program, versus a true capabilities gap," Sullivan said.

The Army's combat vehicle portfolio review, led by Chiarelli, should shed more light on why GCV is needed and why it is a top priority, Sullivan said. The reviews results are expected soon.

"Decision makers will have to decide if the Army has made a convincing case for the GCV before allowing it to proceed into the technology development phase," Sullivan said.

Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter will have to weigh that when he meets with Army officials in April for the GCV Milestone A decision. If the Army gets approval, it intends to award up to three contracts for a 24-month technology development phase.

With the release of the second request for proposals, the Army announced a $9 million to $10.5 million cost target for the new vehicle. This is far less than the first set of requirements would have cost, according to Sullivan's testimony.

During the analysis of alternatives - conducted after the release of the first request for proposals – the Army determined the manufacturing unit cost for the vehicle would be $18 million to $24 million, Sullivan said.

The revised request for proposals is supposed to have shed many of the ambitious requirements that originally drove up the cost.

Only 130 of the original 900 requirements are now deemed critical, Lt. Gen. William Phillips, military deputy to the Army acquisition chief, said.

However, a new, robust analysis of alternatives for the revised requirements has yet to be done, according to GAO.

The condensed analysis that was done "did not compare the capabilities of the new GCV design concept with the wider range of alternatives in the original assessment – such as the Bradley upgrade and some foreign or current vehicles – but only against the current force Bradley vehicles (without upgrades)," according to Sullivan's testimony.

It is too soon tell how risky the program's acquisition strategy is, Sullivan said. More information is needed on what industry has proposed before judging whether the seven-year timeline can be met and whether mature technology will be used, he said.

[buglerbilly]

Dicks: Seven Years Is Too Long for U.S. Army GCV

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 16 Mar 2011 18:56

Tricky Dicky at it again BUT this time I actually agree with him..............:speechless

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., sees no reason why it should take seven years for the U.S. Army to build a Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV).

Speaking March 16, the ranking member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee urged Army leaders to shorten the set timeline for the GCV program.

'I think five years is more than enough time to get this done," Dicks said. He asked Army Secretary John McHugh to reconsider the current seven-year schedule.

The Army could accelerate how fast it takes to build the new vehicle by pursuing less ambitious requirements and incremental improvements, he said.

"There are systems around the world that we could probably modify and utilize as we have in other areas," Dicks said. "I think seven years is just fraught with danger."

McHugh said that through the competitive bid process, industry teams could always propose faster schedules, and thereby make their bids more attractive. McHugh also cited recent testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that warned seven years could be too fast.

"A four-year engineering and manufacturing phase for an entirely new combat vehicle appears to be ambitious," the GAO said earlier this month.

The Army's own GCV Red Team concluded that moderate improvements to existing vehicles could be achieved in seven years, but to build a next-generation combat vehicle would more likely take 10 to 12 years, according to the GAO.

"We're trying to do the best we can," McHugh said. "I fully recognize that time is money and to the extent that we can speed up that timeline, we will do what we can."

The Army was expected to award contracts to up to three industry teams in April, however, the date has moved to May as the Army waits to see how the 2011 budget is resolved. Under the Continuing Resolution funding levels, the Army does not have enough money to award contracts for GCV, which could cause the first production vehicle to slip, according to senior Army officials.

The three teams that have submitted bids are an SAIC-led team that includes Boeing, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, and Rheinmetall; a BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman-led effort; and a group led by General Dynamics Land Systems, which includes Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

The GCV is supposed to replace Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

When Dicks was chairman of the subcommittee last March, he had a very similar message for McHugh and Gen. George Casey, the service's chief of staff, telling them that he thought the GCV schedule could be accelerated.

At this week's hearing, Casey said he and Defense Secretary Robert Gates pushed hard to get it down to five years, but that Army and OSD staff came back and said seven years was as fast as it could be done.

The Army also says that with its second request for proposals, it has a much better handle on the vehicle's requirements. While the original request had roughly 990 requirements, the new one lists 136 tier-one, or non-negotiable, requirements, McHugh said.

"I heard this referred to as a 'troubled program,' the contracts are not even out yet," Casey said. "I have to ask for a little bit of slack here."

[buglerbilly]

Army Leaders Stress Need for Ground Combat Vehicle

(Source: US Army; issued March 16, 2011)

WASHINGTON --- Army leaders told members of Congress March 9 that the service needs a new, next-generation Ground Combat Vehicle able to accommodate new technologies as they emerge, defend against a wide range of current and future threats and deliver a full nine-man squad under armor into the full spectrum of military operations.

Speaking before the Tactical Air and Land subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the Army, said the GCV will be designed with lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The Ground Combat Vehicle takes into account all of the lessons we have learned over the last ten years of warfare and ensures that we have a combat vehicle that will allow us to fight in a full-spectrum environment," Chiarelli said.

Members of the subcommittee questioned Army leaders about the need for the new vehicle. "So far the Army has justified the need for the Ground Combat Vehicle by pointing out that they need a vehicle with increased protection and more on-board power," said Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, who went on to ask why upgrades to the Bradley Fighting Vehicle would not be sufficient.

Army leaders underscored the need for development of a Ground Combat Vehicle, as an upgraded Bradley does not have the capacity to deliver a nine-man infantry squad into battle -- a critical requirement, they said, given how the Army conducts operations.

Army leaders also stressed that current vehicles cannot accommodate future advances in the areas of armor protection, computing and networking technologies. The size, weight and power considerations impose clear limits on how much current vehicles can be upgraded, they said.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Service Committee March 3, Gen. Martin Dempsey, TRADOC commander and nominee to be chief of staff of the Army, told lawmakers that the Ground Combat Vehicle represents a process of change.

"I think the Ground Combat Vehicle is prototypical, not only of the next generation of a ground combat vehicle, but of a process change and that's how we should look at it. The Bradley has been a venerable part of our inventor, but it has reached its maximum capacity in weight and energy," Dempsey said.

Also, unlike the Bradley, the Ground Combat Vehicle will be designed to deliver a full nine-man squad under armor to the battlefield, something considered crucial to the Army's ability to conduct fire and maneuver in close-quarters fighting in complex terrain, Army officials said.

Maintaining small tactical unit integrity is consistent with the Army's Operating Concept which calls for Combined Arms Maneuver and Wide Area Security - ideas which underscore the expectation that the Army will need to move small units across a non-linear battlefield able to conduct a full range of military operations.

Keeping the nine-man squad intact allows company commanders and platoon leaders to better focus on command of operations and not constrain their movement and positioning due to transporting squad members, service officials said.

Furthermore, the Ground Combat Vehicle would be of critical assistance in today's current combat environments in Iraq and Afghanistan in addition to being helpful against anticipated future threats, Chiarelli explained.

The Ground Combat Vehicle will be built with an incremental ability to add or remove armor protections as dictated by the threat level and what becomes available by way of new technologies, he said.

"We see Ground Combat Vehicle as a vehicle for the future and for today. A vehicle that can add capability packages and add armor as it may be needed for a firefight or shed the armor when it is not needed," said Chiarelli. "Through incremental builds we want to put new technologies on the vehicle as they become proven and capable."

The Army is now evaluating proposals submitted by industry bidders in response to the recently release Request for Proposal which delineates the requirements for the vehicle.

The RFP outlines four big priorities for the Ground Combat Vehicle:

--force protection - to ensure the new vehicle can protect Soldiers against a wide range of current and future threats;

--capacity- the ability to transport a nine-Soldier Infantry Squad to the battle, under armor;

---full-spectrum operations - modular armor, open architecture, and growth potential;

-- designed to ensure the vehicle is delivered to Soldiers within seven years from the contract award.

Lt. Gen. Bill Phillips, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology), told the subcommittee that the Army re-worked the RFP in order to properly align, prioritize and "tier" the requirements and focus on mature technologies.

"We re-characterized all of the requirements - there were over 900. We came up with about 130 that were critical to make sure we had the big four capabilities inside the Ground Combat Vehicle," he said.

The Army plans to award up to three 24-month Technology Demonstration contracts.

The RFP outlines the need for mature technology and clear cost goals. The RFP states that the government intends to hit a target unit-manufacturing cost of $9-10.5 million per vehicle with operational sustainment costs of $200 per mile.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Putting New Energy Into the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle Program

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued May 16, 2011)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

We are about to see the results of the Army's latest effort to fix its broken acquisition system. The Army currently is evaluating three proposals for its new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). Last year, confronting the likelihood of a procurement disaster, the Army withdrew its Request for Proposal (RFP). The revised RFP was different insofar as it had only four "must achieve" performance requirements. It also established a “should cost” threshold for the vehicle and a target for life cycle cost. The Army characterized the new RFP as a challenge to the defense sector to come forward with innovative solutions.

One of the most interesting, potentially revolutionary, offerings in the GCV competition is BAE Systems' proposal to power its entrant with a hybrid electric drive system. BAE had been developing the hybrid drive as part of its work on the predecessor to the GCV, the Future Combat System. Now it is making hybrid electric drive a centerpiece of its offering for the GCV.

A hybrid electric drive offers a number of tactical advantages. It is easier to get the space to carry a nine man squad because of the smaller power plant and lack of a drive train. Such a drive would be able to power the myriad of sensors, communications systems, computers and electronic devices that now festoon Army vehicles. A hybrid-drive-equipped vehicle could use stored electric energy to power those systems or provide off-board power instead of having to run its engine. Because it would be lighter than conventionally powered vehicles of equal size, a hybrid-powered GCV could attain higher speeds. Or if speed is not required, it could carry additional protection.

A hybrid electric drive could have an even more decisive impact on Army logistics. Right off the bat, such a system would save 20-25 percent in fuel. This would mean fewer tanker trucks, truck convoys and convoy guards. All this would save money and make the Army more agile. It would also mean fewer casualties resulting from attacks on tanker convoys. Reduced fuel use would help burnish the Army's green credentials. Also, a hybrid drive has 50 percent fewer moving parts than current diesel engines which means fewer breakdowns, easier maintenance, a smaller spare parts stockpile and a reduced complement of repair personnel. At a time of growing cost consciousness for the Army, this seems like a no brainer.

Some in the Army have expressed nervousness about deploying a hybrid electric drive on a military vehicle, characterizing the technology as somehow risky. Today's car buyers might find the idea that the hybrid electric drive is risky more than a little peculiar. Sales lots are filled with hybrid cars, including large and heavy SUVs. Large hybrid electric drives have been powering hundreds of trains on U.S. railroads for decades. More significant for those in the Army who worry about such things are the thousands of hybrid electric powered buses that are being driven and maintained by transportation systems across the country. This experience enables BAE to provide an estimate of both operating and life-cycle costs for its proposed GCV design.

The Army thinks that it has demonstrated its capacity for innovation by altering the way it wrote the statement of requirements for the revised GCV proposal. A far greater innovation, one that would energize the Army's vehicle modernization and deliver practical benefits in the field, would be procuring a hybrid electric drive for its armored combat vehicles. Hybrid drive is one opportunity where efficiency and imagination are not in conflict.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

GCV To Face Another DoD Review in July

By MICHAEL HOFFMAN and KATE BRANNEN

Published: 30 Jun 2011 12:48

The Ground Combat Vehicle (gcv) program will receive another scrub by Defense Department officials in a Defense Acquisition Board Review scheduled for July 21.

Questions have arisen about the Army's need for the GCV in the next seven years as specified by service officials. A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the funds from the canceled Future Combat Systems (FCS) program "were driving the events and activities of the program, versus a true capabilities gap," GAO's director of acquisition and sourcing management, Michael Sullivan, testified before Congress.

The review comes after a major Army leadership shakeup, with Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the upcoming retirement of Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli; and resignation of acquisition chief Malcolm O'Neill. The moves leave some wondering if the GCV program will maintain support at the service's highest levels of leadership.

Chiarelli had listed GCV as the Army's second-highest acquisition priority behind the Army's network.

The Defense Acquisition Board includes the four service secretaries, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other undersecretaries of defense.

Last August, the Army rescinded its original request for proposals after an internal review was done by the program's requirements and acquisition strategy. The Army issued revised requests with fewer requirements in November.

The second request for proposals dropped the cost target from the $18 million to $24 million of the first proposal to $9 million to $10 million per vehicle, Sullivan told Congress in March. However, the $10 million price tag could leave the GCV vulnerable to future budget cuts and put it at risk of suffering the same fate as the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, according to analysis by the Congressional Research Service.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army Ground Combat Vehicle May Face New Setback

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 12 Aug 2011 13:47

The U.S. Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program appeared to face yet another delay Aug. 11, when the Army contacted the three industry teams bidding on the program and asked them to extend their proposals until Sept. 30.


Pentagon officials say acquisition chief Ashton Carter, above, approved the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle acquisition strategy, but the Army still awaits Carter’s signed acquisition decision memorandum. (Rob Curtis / Staff file photo)

This is the second time the Army has requested an extension and it may further delay a program that has already seen a handful of setbacks since it was first conceived.

The Army previously asked the bidders to extend their proposals from May 1 until Aug. 19, according to an industry official.

The three teams bidding on the program are an SAIC-led team that includes Boeing, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall; a BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman-led effort; and a General Dynamics Land Systems-led group that includes Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

The teams submitted their most recent bids in January, expecting the Army to award up to three contracts in April or early May.

April then got pushed to June, which then became July or early August. And, with the latest extension, it appears contract awards could be pushed until September or beyond.

The extension could mean a delayed contract award or someone is just being very, very careful, one source said.

Because the proposals were submitted in January, the Army is required to ask the industry teams each time it extends the bids whether the pricing data still holds.

The latest extension follows a July 21 Defense Acquisition Board review, where Army leaders met with Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter to decide if the program should move forward.

Following the review, Pentagon officials said that Carter approved the Army's acquisition strategy. However, three weeks later, the Army is still awaiting a signed acquisition decision memorandum from him that would allow the service to award contracts for the 24-month technology development phase of the program.

Meanwhile, the Army is also expected to launch a second analysis of alternatives, after the U.S. House Armed Services Committee noted the Army has not conducted a thorough enough alternatives review after updating the vehicle's requirements.

The proposal extension, while short, is just the latest event to hold up the program.

Last summer, with contract awards around the corner, the Army abruptly canceled its Request for Proposals (RfP) for the vehicle and announced it would issue a new one with revised requirements.

At the time, the Army cited an internal review of the program that had found flaws with the acquisition strategy.

The Army issued a revised RfP on Nov. 30, requiring industry teams to go back to the drawing board and rethink their bids.

With the new request, the Army listed its requirements from optional to mandatory and capped the technology development contracts at $450 million for each team.

The Army also announced a $9 million to $10.5 million cost target for the new vehicle.

The Army plans to buy more than 1,800 of the vehicles to replace its fleet of Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

There have been questions from inside and outside of the service about the need for the new vehicle and criticism of its seven-year development timeline. Some critics describe it as too fast, others as too slow.

As budget pressures mount, scrutiny of big-ticket weapons programs also grows.

According to DoD budget documents, GCV research and development is expected to cost $7.6 billion between 2012 and 2017. At about $10 million a copy, the program could cost an additional $18 billion in procurement costs.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army GCV Development Contracts Awarded

Aug 18, 2011

By Paul McLeary paul_mcleary@aviationweek.com
WASHINGTON



Industry teams led by BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land System were awarded technology development phase contracts for the U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program late Aug. 18.

A third team led by SAIC that submitted a bid earlier this year was shut out of the competition. BAE’s fixed-price-incentive-fee contract is for $449,964,969, while General Dynamics received an award for $439,715,950. The Army has set a contract completion date of June 26, 2013, for this phase of the competition.

While the award will surely cheer the two winning teams, the GCV program is not without future challenges. Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter signed an acquisition decision memorandum Aug. 17 that mandates that the armed service perform two reviews of alternatives at the same time the winning bidders continue work on the program.

The memo also bumps up the average procurement unit-cost of each vehicle to $13 million from a previously stated target of $9-10.5 million. The new figure includes spare parts. In his Aug. 17 memo, Carter wrote that completing the program “within the department’s cost and schedule constraints is strongly dependent on aggressive exploration of the capabilities trade space and the full range of alternatives prior to finalizing requirements.”

The Army plans to buy around 1,800 GCVs to replace the aging Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and has said that it plans to spend $7.6 billion between 2012 and 2017 on GCV research and development.

BAE GCV concept

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Ground Combat Vehicle Lives To Fight Another Day

Posted by Paul McLeary at 8/18/2011 6:03 PM CDT



Two industry teams, one led by BAE Systems, and the other led by General Dynamics Land Systems, were awarded technology development phase contracts for the U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program late Thursday afternoon. A third team led by SAIC that had submitted a bid earlier this year was shut out of the competition to manufacture more than 1,800 vehicles to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The Army has set a contract completion date of June 26, 2013 for this phase of the competition.

Secretary of the Army John McHugh released a statement late Thursday, saying that while the Army “enthusiastically welcomes” the launch of the program, “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.” This jibes with an Aug. 17 memo signed by Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter that calls for two separate analyses of alternatives to be conducted while work is ongoing on the $900 million technology development phase.

McHugh’s statement also keeps the program on track to be completed in seven years, but says that “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.”

In other words, the Army is saying that while they like what they’ve seen from these two teams enough to invest almost $900 million in them, in the end they might end up liking something else better.

Image: US Army

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Army Picks BAE, GD for Ground Combat Vehicle

By KATE BRANNEN

Published: 18 Aug 2011 17:17

In a surprise move, the U.S. Army has awarded two technology development contracts instead of three for its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program. BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems were announced as the winners Aug. 18.


The U.S. Army plans to buy more than 1,800 GCVs to replace the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, above. (The U.S. Army)

An SAIC-led team that also included Boeing, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall did not receive a contract award.

BAE, which had teamed up with Northrop Grumman, received a $450 million contract, according to the contract announcement. General Dynamics Land Systems won a $440 million contract. Their team also includes Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Before the decision was announced, defense analysts and government officials had predicted that if the Army went with two contracts instead of three, the losing team would protest.

SAIC had said its approach to the program was to leverage the investments the company made in the Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicle program and the Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle to produce an American infantry fighting vehicle "designed for the challenges our warfighters are facing today as well as those of future conflicts."

In an Aug. 17 acquisition decision memorandum, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter gave the Army permission to award contracts for the program's technology-development phase, but also ordered up a simultaneous review of alternatives.

Marked "For Official Use Only," Carter's memo also reveals a new bit of pricing data: The average procurement unit cost of each GCV will be around $13 million. This compares to the previously stated cost target of $9 million to $10.5 million.

An Army spokesman said the $13 million figure includes spare parts.

Carter's memo directs the Army to conduct two reviews to see if there is anything else out there that could fill the Army's need for a new infantry fighting vehicle without a brand-new development effort.

However, the memo also authorizes the Army to move ahead with its current brand-new development effort.

The Army plans to buy more than 1,800 GCVs to replace Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

[buglerbilly]

General Dynamics Team Awarded Army Ground Combat Vehicle $440 Million Technology Development Contract

(Source: General Dynamics Land Systems; issued Aug. 18, 2011)

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. --- A team led by General Dynamics that includes Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Company and Tognum America, Inc., was awarded a $439.7 million contract for the Technology Development (TD) phase of the U.S. Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) program.

The overall goal of the GCV IFV program is to develop and produce an affordable and operationally effective Infantry Fighting Vehicle in seven years.

"The General Dynamics team's design is focused on delivering an affordable ground combat vehicle that provides optimal Soldier protection and operational effectiveness. Our design draws on affordable, mature technologies to provide protection, capacity for a nine-soldier squad, network interoperability, mobility and lethality that is unmatched by any existing infantry fighting vehicle," said Steve Schultz, vice president, Ground Combat Vehicle Program for General Dynamics Land Systems.

"Our approach capitalizes on the proven ability and competencies of each team member to meet the requirements for an integrated next-generation fighting system," Schultz said. "We are offering a balanced and affordable solution that meets the requirements of the U.S. Army."

General Dynamics assembled a best-in-class team with unmatched experience and industry leading program management, systems engineering and technical expertise which resulted in an affordable and operationally effective solution. Together, this team provides a storied legacy of performance on contemporary ground combat vehicles.

"Our solution will provide a nine-Soldier squad an affordable protected mobile environment, mounted and dismounted connectivity, and superior lethality while providing the Army with the growth potential necessary to adapt the GCV IFV platform to the varied and evolving conditions of combat," Schultz said.

The purpose of the 24-month GCV TD phase is to complete the preliminary design of the GCV and to reduce the risk of performance of the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase of the program. Deliverables for this contract include the Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) Protection Subsystem Prototype, the Mine Blast Subsystem Prototype Test Article, technical documentation and associated data.

With more than 70 years of ground combat vehicle design, development, integration and sustainment experience, General Dynamics Land Systems leads the team as the prime contractor and has overall responsibility for program management, vehicle design and integration. General Dynamics also is responsible for vehicle structure and chassis, squad and crew environments and integrated survivability and safety.

Lockheed Martin has responsibility for the turret, lethal and non-lethal effects and embedded training. The company offers over 50 years of experience in systems integration and is a world leader in design and development of missiles and fire control systems.

Raytheon is responsible for the RPG protection system, indirect-vision and sensor integration. The company brings more than 40 years of combat sensor and systems integration experience in providing advanced situational awareness, target engagement and force protection capabilities for a variety of ground combat vehicles.

Tognum America has responsibility for the power pack, which comprises the engine, transmission and generator. Tognum is the premier provider of high-capacity diesel propulsion systems based on MTU engines. The company has over 100 years of proven integration experience in combat systems worldwide.

General Dynamics C4 Systems leads the network and communications integrated product team and has responsibility for network integration, communications, computing and information assurance. The company brings over 50 years of experience in the development of the some of the world's most advanced command, control, communications and computing systems and information assurance.

Work is being done at General Dynamics Land Systems sites in Sterling Heights, Mich., and Lima, Ohio; Lockheed Martin in Grand Prairie, Texas; Raytheon in McKinney and Plano, Texas; General Dynamics C4 Systems in Scottsdale, Ariz., Taunton, Mass., and Fort Wayne, Ind.; and Tognum America in Detroit, Mich., Aiken, S.C., and Friedrichshafen, Germany.

(ends)

BAE Systems–Northrop Grumman Team Selected for $449.9 Million Technology Development Contract for Ground Combat Vehicle Program

(Source: BAE Systems; issued August 18, 2011)

ARLINGTON, Va. --- BAE Systems has been awarded a $449.9 million contract to participate in the technology development (TD) phase of the U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program. BAE Systems is teamed with Northrop Grumman Corporation to offer a vehicle that provides exceptional growth and survivability at an affordable price.

The TD phase of the GCV program is a 24-month program directed at maturing the GCV proposal through the preliminary design review in anticipation of prototype builds during the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the program. The BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman team was one of two industry teams awarded TD contracts.

“Advancing to this next phase in the competition brings us one step closer to fielding a vehicle for our soldiers that is affordable, provides for maximum force protection and is built to accommodate future technological enhancements,” said Mark Signorelli, vice president and general manager of Weapon Systems at BAE Systems. “We appreciate being selected by the U.S. Army and the Department of Defense to mature our GCV solution, a critical capability required to modernize our Army and provide soldiers with a decisive edge against any adversary. At BAE Systems, we take pride in protecting those who protect us and with our partners and teammates, are fully committed to the success of this program.”

The BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman vehicle features an adaptive platform that will remain relevant for decades to come, bringing more survivability, mobility and versatility to the Army and with levels of protection scalable to the demands of a variety of missions.

“The BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman team has applied its expertise and lessons learned from a decade of warfare to design a network-ready, fully integrated vehicle with significantly increased capability, so U.S. forces can engage and prevail in full-spectrum operations today and in the future,” said Joe G. Taylor, Jr., Northrop Grumman Information Systems' vice president for Ground Combat Systems.

The team’s offering includes a hybrid electric drive propulsion system that enables exceptional force protection and mobility in a lower weight vehicle while provisioning for growth in power requirements as new technologies are matured and integrated into the platform. This technology allows for GCV to meet the demands of near term operations while providing a robust platform for future technology integration and growth at low risk and cost.

The BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman Ground Combat Vehicle team includes: QinetiQ, iRobot Corporation, MTU and Saft. As prime contractor, BAE Systems leads the overall program management, systems integration, vehicle design, structure and logistical support as well as readiness and sustainment of the platform. Northrop Grumman serves as the C4ISR lead. QinetiQ provides the key component of the hybrid electric drive propulsion system, the E-X-Drive. iRobot serves as the unmanned ground vehicle integrator and will enhance future autonomous operations. MTU provides the engine and power generation for GCV and Saft provides the battery and energy storage system.

Work under the technology development phase will be performed at BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman sites in Sterling Heights and Troy, Michigan; Santa Clara and Carson, California; York, Pennsylvania; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Huntsville, Alabama.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Higher Cost Estimate Threatens GCV: Colonel

By MICHAEL HOFFMAN and KATE BRANNEN

Published: 19 Aug 2011 16:30

If an estimated cost of $17 million for the U.S. Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) is accurate, the service might have to cancel the program, the GCV program manager said.

Col. Andrew DiMarco made the comments the day after the Army announced it awarded two technology development contracts worth a total of $890 million and two days after Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter ordered a simultaneous review of alternatives.

The Army acquisition arm estimated an average procurement cost of $13 million and a manufacturing cost between $9 million and $10.5 million. Army leaders have emphasized that in this budget environment, the service can't afford spiraling costs for the program. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, listed GCV as the Army's No. 2 modernization priority.

When asked if a ceiling existed for the program, DiMarco said the service would have to consider canceling it if the price per vehicle crept above the $13 million marker predicted by the service. But the Pentagon's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office said the program is already $4 million above that ceiling and would cost the Army an additional $7.2 billion if the service buys the planned 1,800 copies of the next-generation infantry fighting vehicle.

Army officials used a "bottom-up" approach for their estimate, while DiMarco said the CAPE used a different methodology.

In a surprise move, the U.S. Army awarded two technology development contracts instead of three for the program. BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems were announced as the winners Aug. 18.

An SAIC-led team that also included Boeing, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall did not receive a contract award.

BAE, which had teamed up with Northrop Grumman, received a $450 million contract, according to the contract announcement. General Dynamics Land Systems won a $440 million contract. The team also includes Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Before the decision was announced, defense analysts and government officials had predicted that if the Army went with two contracts instead of three, the losing team would protest.

SAIC had said its approach to the program was to leverage the investments the company made in the Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicle program and the Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle to produce an American infantry fighting vehicle "designed for the challenges our war fighters are facing today, as well as those of future conflicts."

In an Aug. 17 acquisition decision memorandum, Carter gave the Army permission to award contracts for the program's technology development phase but also ordered a simultaneous review of alternatives.

Marked "For Official Use Only," Carter's memo also reveals a new bit of pricing data: The average procurement unit cost of each GCV will be around $13 million. This compares to the previously stated cost target of $9 million to $10.5 million.

An Army spokesman said the $13 million figure includes spare parts.

Carter's memo directs the Army to conduct two reviews to see if any existing vehicles could fill the Army's need for a new infantry fighting vehicle without a new development effort.

However, the memo also authorizes the Army to move ahead with its current new development effort.

"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," Army Secretary John McHugh said in a statement. "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."

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

More on the Army's Strange Ground Vehicle Program

Posted by Paul McLeary at 8/24/2011 12:40 PM CDT

Some melon called Bismark has said in the comments section that hybrid technology is only of relevance to Scout/Recon vehicles where, one presumes, the so-called "quietness" of the motive power is particularly relevant..............typical dumbass, shithead comment! One presumes the 15-20% minmum fuel burn saving is irrelevant? He's also obviously not heard of band-tracks..............

Now that the Army has awarded two $400 million technology development contracts to industry teams led by BAE Systems and General Dynamics for its Ground Combat Vehicle program, it’s time to start hearing a bit more from the two companies about their designs.

One of the biggest differences between the two teams is the engine solution they’re offering. General Dynamics is going with the MTU 883 diesel engine, while BAE Systems is going almost the opposite direction with a new hybrid-electric engine.

Robert Sorge, who is spearheading the GCV program for General Dynamics Land Systems, says that the company chose the "combat proven” x 1100 Allison transmisison used in the Abrams tank “because of the significant risks in other technologies,” and also because the company is making an effort to achieve significant commonality between the GCV and it’s iconic Abrams.

BAE Systems’ Mark Signorelli, VP of Weapons Systems said that while there is additional investment cost associated with the hybrid electric system, the “procurement cost difference is not as significant I think as most people would conclude without having a detailed look at the cost data.” Both teams stressed that they meet all of the power generation and power storage requirements that that Army outlined in its request for proposal.

Another big issue, obviously, is cost. With different cost per vehicle numbers floating around out there, there is some confusion over what the official procurement estimates really are. The Army has said that it is sticking to its original $9 million to $10.5 million estimate, while the Pentagon has said that it sees $16 to $17 million per vehicle as a more realistic range, and then there is a new Army number that includes spare parts that falls in the $11 to $13 million range.

BAE’s Signorelli said that while he had not “had a chance to look at what [the Army is] including in their $11 million to $13 million cost figures,” and that “those are slightly different than the targets we've been given,” the BAE concept is “well below the midpoint of the range that we were given and we have a very high level of confidence in our cost estimates.”

GD’s Robert Sorge said that the company “will work with the Army at looking at some of the things we traded off in order to come to the affordability range that was originally specified in the Request for Proposals.” He added that the company will also need to work with the Army in understanding the differences between the unit manufacturing cost the Army asked for and the unit average production cost the Acquisition Decision Memorandum specified. Still, the company’s estimated manufacturing coats “is on the low end” of the $9-10.5 million per vehicle.

[buglerbilly]

MTU Propulsion Systems Selected to Power U.S. Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV)

(Source: Tognum; issued August 24, 2011)

- Both GCV Technology Development contracts feature MTU propulsion systems

- Based on MTU Series 880 and 890 engine platforms with proven reliability, durability and compact design

FRIEDRICHSHAFEN/DETROIT --- The specialist for propulsion and power solutions Tognum has been selected as the preferred partner for power and propulsion by both of the project teams who received Technology Development contracts last week from the U.S. Army for its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program.

As such, Tognum America, Detroit (Michigan) based US subsidiary of Tognum AG and formerly known as MTU Detroit Diesel, will provide propulsion systems based on the proven MTU Series 880 and 890 engine platforms tailored to meet the specific needs of each vehicle platform. The two vehicle development teams are led by BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems.

The platforms of Series 880 and 890 engines are based on technologically advanced high-speed diesel engines with an unrivaled power-to-weight ratio and a broad range of capabilities. These engine platforms have a proven track record in militaries throughout the world and are the clear technology leaders in power density for ground combat vehicles.

The purpose of the 24-month Technology Development phase (Milestone A) is to complete the preliminary design of the GCV infantry fighting vehicle and provide the U.S. Army with a basis for defining the direction of the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase (Milestone B). The U.S. Army plans to field more than 1,870 GCVs to replace some of the Bradley fighting vehicles. Production of the GCV is expected to begin in seven years.

The MTU propulsion systems to support the GCV program production will be built at Tognum’s US facility in Aiken, South Carolina.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

SAIC Protests GCV Contract Award

By MICHAEL HOFFMAN

Published: 26 Aug 2011 14:43

The American malaise! Nobody ever seems to accept a loss as exactly that, a loss. Irrespective of the reason for their deselection, just be good enough and courteous enough, to accept it and move one.............the only one that has ever won is Boeing and the less said about that (non-)competition the better.

SAIC officials filed a protest Aug. 26 against the U.S. Army's award of Ground Combat Vehicle technology development contracts to two defense teams led by BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems.

However, as of 5 p.m. EST Aug. 26 Lt. Col. David Gercken, an Army spokesman, said the service had not received SAIC's formal protest. A Government Accountability Office leader said his agency had received it.

Officials with the McLean, Va., company said they felt the Army made "errors in the evaluation process" as the service looked at the three bids to develop its new infantry fighting vehicle, SAIC spokeswoman Melissa Koskovich said in a statement.

SAIC led a team that includes Chicago-based Boeing and Germany's Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall, which sought to use experience they gained working on the Army's Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicle program and Germany's Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

SAIC officials said they felt the Army team chose not to appropriately integrate "existing, proven technology into a comprehensive solution," Koskovich said.

General Dynamics' group, which includes Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, also built its bid on existing technologies and engines to meet the seven year deadline set by Army leaders. The bid by BAE Systems, which teamed with Northrop Grumman, conversely featured a hybrid engine that company officials will significantly cut life cycle costs.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has 100 days to issue a ruling on the protest.

Ralph White, GAO's managing associate general counsel for procurement law, said he could not immediately comment on the protest although he confirmed GAO received the protest around 4 p.m. Aug. 26..

Loren Thompson, a defense consultant for BAE Systems and analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said he didn't expect the Army to overturn the decision.

Because of the Army's recent acquisition struggles, highlighted by internal reviews, the service "spent a lot of time putting together its solicitation and thinking through its acquisition strategy," he said.

The Army's decision to award two and not three technology development contracts came as a surprise to many defense analysts. However, some speculated the pressure of the austere federal budget environment forced service leaders' hands.

BAE Systems' team received $450 million and the General Dynamics Land Systems team received $440 million.

Though the Defense Department awarded $890 million worth of contracts for the technology development phase, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter ordered up a simultaneous review of alternatives.

The Army plans to spend $7.6 billion between 2012 and 2017 to field 1,800 vehicles to replace its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Army officials estimate each GCV will cost $13 million, a figure that includes spare parts.

[buglerbilly]

A New Image of GCV Emerges



A new image of the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) developed by the GDLS lead team for teh US Army GCV program. The design highlights a highly armored, low profile unmanned turret, with medium caliber automatic cannon and overhead remotely operated weapon station, elevated?) sensor package and on-the-move SATCOM. 260 degrees threat warning, with active protection sensors mounted on the turret fore and aft, but this image does not show a specific interceptor as part of the active protection system.The GCV is also fitted with situational awareness for the crew, provided by what seems to be six wedge-like sensors (360 degree cameras) located in the front, sides and rear. The oversized skirts indicate layered protection including different layers of armor that could withstand different threat classes. The commander and driver hatches are mounted on the hull. An auxiliary power unit is seen on the aft.

Lockheed martin has unveiled an image of the Ground Combat Vehicle it helps developing as part of the General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) team. The image of the vehicle was displayed at a DSEi 2011 briefing by Lockheed Martin, addressing its extensive land vehicles activities.

Lockheed Martin is involved with land systems developments for over three decades, with most of the work focused on tracked and wheeled platforms supporting the MLRS program and its derivatives (MLRS, HIMARS, MLRS repair and recovery vehicle. The company is also involved in two major equipment programs in the U.K., namely the Scout SV program, for which they design and develop the turret, weapon systems and electronic architecture, and the Warrior Capability Sustainment program (WCSP) the later program is still awaiting UK MOD approval as Lockheed Martin remains the sole bidder on this program. The Warrior and Scout SV will share the same turret, saving considerably on development logistics and training costs.

For the US Marine Corps Medium Personnel Carrier (MPC) program Lockheed Martin is also offering a derivative of the Patria 8×8 AMV, designed for amphibious operation.

[buglerbilly]

Defense Acquisitions: Future Ground-Based Vehicles and Network Initiatives Face Development and Funding Challenges

(Source: Government Accountability Office; issued Oct. 26, 2011)

(Testimony by Belva M. Martin, GAO director, acquisition and sourcing management, before the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, House Committee on Armed Services.)

Why GAO Did This Study

After the Army canceled the Future Combat System in June of 2009, it began developing modernization plans, including developing a new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) and additional network capability. At the same time, the Army was considering options on how to improve its light tactical vehicles.

This statement addresses potential issues related to developing (1) the new GCV, (2) a common information network, and (3) the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) in a constrained budget environment. The statement is based largely on previous GAO work conducted over the last year in response to congressional requests and results of other reviews of Army modernization.

To conduct this work, GAO analyzed program documentation, strategies, and test results; interviewed independent experts and Army and Department of Defense (DOD) officials; and witnessed demonstrations of current and emerging network technologies.

What GAO Found

Delivering a feasible, cost-effective, and executable GCV solution presents a major challenge to the Army, with key questions about the robustness of the analysis of alternatives, the plausibility of its 7-year schedule, and cost and affordability. DOD and the Army have taken steps to increase oversight of the program, but resolving these issues during technology development will remain a challenge.

For example, the Army has already reduced some requirements and encouraged contractors to use mature technologies in their proposals, but the 7-year schedule remains ambitious, and delays would increase development costs. Independent cost estimates have suggested that 9 to 10 years is a more realistic schedule. Over the next 2 years during the technology development phase, the Army faces major challenges in deciding which capabilities to pursue and include in a GCV vehicle design and determine whether the best option is a new vehicle or modifications to a current vehicle.

The Army’s new information network strategy moves away from a single network development program to an incremental approach with which feasible technologies can be developed, tested, and fielded. The new strategy has noteworthy aspects, such as using periodic field evaluations to assess systems that may provide potential benefit and getting soldier feedback on the equipment being tested.

However, the Army has not articulated requirements, incremental objectives, or cost and schedule projections for its new network. It is important that the Army proceed in defining requirements and expected capabilities for the network to avoid the risk of developing individual capabilities that may not work together as a network. With the cancellation last week of its ground mobile radio and continuing problems in developing technology to provide advanced networking capability, the Army will still need to find foundational pieces for its network.

The Army is reworking earlier plans to develop and acquire the JLTV and is planning to recapitalize some of its High Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMWWV). These efforts have just begun, however, and their results are not yet assured. To reduce risk in the JLTV program, the services relied on multiple vendors during technology development to increase their knowledge of the needed technologies, determine the technology maturity level, and determine which requirements were achievable.

As a result, the services identified trades in requirements to drive down the cost of the vehicle. For example, the services found that JLTV could not achieve both protection level and transportability goals, so the services are accepting a heavier vehicle. A potential risk for the services in allowing industry to build vehicles for testing is that the prototypes may not be mature; the Army will need to keep its options open to changes that may result from these tests. Both the Army and the Marine Corps have articulated a significant future role for their Up-Armored HMMWV fleets, yet the fleets are experiencing reduced automotive performance, the need for better protection as threats have evolved, and other issues.

The Army is planning to recapitalize a portion of its Up-Armored HMMWV fleet to increase automotive performance and improve blast protection. The Marine Corps’ plans to extend the service life of some of its HMMWVs used in light tactical missions are not yet known.

Click here for the full report (18 pages in PDF format) on the GAO website.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d12181t.pdf

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

New Army optimism on GCV

By Philip Ewing Thursday, October 27th, 2011 10:02 am

All that talk from back in August about the Ground Combat Vehicle costing as much as $13 million per vehicle? (Or much more?) Forget it — two top Army acquisitions officials told Congress on Wednesday that “new” approaches mean the GCV’s costs might come very close to the Army’s original ceiling of $10 million.

Lt. Gen. Bill Phillips told a House Armed Services Committee panel that the Army now estimates it can get GCV, still within seven years, for between $9 and $10.5 million per copy. One apparent reason is service officials’ apparent seriousness about considering existing vehicles as well as a new one. In August, when the Army awarded development contracts to BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems, the GCV program manager all but ruled out the prospect for using an “off-the-shelf” vehicle.

In fact, the service put its money where its mouth was — or, rather, didn’t — in not awarding a contract to a team of SAIC, Boeing and German partners Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall Landsysteme. Those firms wanted to sell the Army a version of Germany’s Puma, but the Army’s message at the time was clear: We want a brand-new showpiece, not last year’s model.

SAIC has since protested that decision, so the process is held up for the moment. Phillips’ testimony Wednesday might even help the company’s case: He told lawmakers the Army will not only review existing foreign-built vehicles, but even a “stretched” version of its own M2 Bradley, likely beefed up to handle the full nine-soldier squad that is the raison d’être for the GCV. Over the next 24 months, soldiers down at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. will play with Bradleys, Strykers and other vehicles and help the Army decide where it goes next, Phillips said.

Reality kept intruding into Wednesday’s hearing, though. Belva Martin, an acquisition analysis expert with the Government Accountability Office, told lawmakers GAO remains skeptical about almost everything involved with GCV: How urgently the Army actually needs it; its no-kidding affordability down the road; and the overall plausibility of getting a production vehicle in seven years.

And Phillips all but undercut his own case for optimism about an off-the-shelf GCV by throwing the Bradley under the bus: Even though the Army will look at an enhanced Bradley for GCV, “Bradley is our most attrited vehicle,” he said. “We haven’t had them in combat since 2007 or 2008, when they were getting heavily attrited because of combat losses. We need a vehicle that withstand the rigor of combat full spectrum — GCV, we think is that vehicle.”

In other words: Yeah, we’ll see if we can make this sow’s ear into a silk purse, but don’t hold your breath. For all the optimism of Phillips and his colleague, Lt. Gen. Bob Lennox, it was clear they’ve kept same basic goal at heart: A brand new vehicle built from the ground up. And it was also clear they realize that strategy may be the riskiest way to go, as evidenced by Lennox’s response to a lawmaker’s question.

“Sir, you asked about if we’re concerned about funding and clearly the answer is yes,” he said. “There’s a lot of unknowns ahead for all of us.”

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/10/27/new-army-optimism-on-gcv/#ixzz1bzusxLA7
DoDBuzz.com

[buglerbilly]

Army goes back to the future on GCV

By Philip Ewing Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 10:39 am



Army Secretary John McHugh said Wednesday that service officials will reconsider a vehicle they’ve already rejected as a potential candidate for their planned Ground Combat Vehicle. Germany’s Puma infantry fighting vehicle, a version of which was offered by an SAIC-led industry team but not awarded a development contract earlier this year, will be among the potential GCV prospects after all, McHugh said.

He mentioned it in passing in response to a reporter’s question as an example of how the Army would do whatever it takes to save money and be as efficient as possible in its acquisitions going forward. Buzz asked McHugh to repeat it just to make sure we hadn’t misheard — so what does the acknowledgement of the Puma mean for the protest SAIC has lodged over this year’s GCV development contract awards?

“I’m not going to sit here and adjudicate the SAIC protest,” he said, other than to reaffirm that the Army will spend the next two years looking at this thing from vichyssoise to pistachios in an effort to get the best deal possible.

“You have to make smart decisions,” McHugh said — and if that means a [consumer, off-the-shelf] vehicle, “we will do that.”

The GCV effort today is frozen by SAIC’s protest. If McHugh’s concession can open peace talks between the Army and SAIC, the company might eventually abandon its dispute and free the Army program officials now encased in carbonite. We’ve asked SAIC to comment and we’ll update as we hear more.

The Army’s GCV efforts are on two parallel tracks: In one, service officials are doing their latest in the never-ending rounds of due diligence about looking at all options for a large, well protected new fighting vehicle for the whole nine-soldier squad. We’ve heard service officials say they’ll look at Strykers, Bradleys — anything and everything — over about the next two years. That’s how they’ll get the vehicle cost down and get it into the fleet within the goal of seven years.

But the other track is the one that appears to represent the Army’s true desire. That’s the one that led the service to issue roughly $900 million in development contracts to General Dynamics and BAE Systems back in August for those two companies to go forward with developing their contestants for GCV. SAIC did not get one of those development deals, even though it was part of a longstanding GCV troika, and the Army’s unspoken message was clear: We don’t want a “stretched” or “upgraded” off-the-shelf vehicle — we want the new hotness.

Since then, we’ve heard McHugh and other top leaders sing a different tune publicly, but how much does the Army’s true green heart ever change? The service would no doubt pursue a compromise GCV if it had no other choice, and McHugh’s concession about the Puma is a nod in that direction. Still, if it can have its ‘druthers, the Army has already put its money where its mouth is.

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/11/02/army-goes-back-to-the-future-on-gcv/#ixzz1cYwooNHa
DoDBuzz.com

[buglerbilly]

Saturday, November 5, 2011, 09:35 AM

US Army may consider buying German Puma or Israeli Namer for Ground Combat Vehicle program.

United States Army Secretary John McHugh said the service may consider buying German or Israeli vehicles for a ground combat vehicle program potentially valued at $40 billion. McHugh said the Army plans to spend more than $46 million to analyze alternatives, which include Germany’s Puma, made by a joint venture of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH and Rheinmetall AG, and Israel’s Namer, made by General Dynamics Corp.


German Puma tracked armoured infantry fighting vehicle


Israeli Namer tracked armoured infantry fighting vehicle

“One of the things we’re going to do is look at programs like the Puma, the Israeli Namer and other similarly already developed programs to see if they’ll do the job,” he said during a breakfast with reporters today.

“We can’t do business as we’ve done in the past -- just pull out the checkbook and write it because it’s easy to do,” he said. “We have to make smart decisions, and if that smart decision means using an upgraded existing platform, going off the shelf with COTS -- commercial off-the-shelf -- or going to another country and ally and buying a program that they have developed and works well, we’ll do that.”

The Army plans to buy as many as 1,874 armored vehicles to replace its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. The U.S. Government Accountability Office in March estimated that the program would cost as much as $40 billion.

The Army on Aug. 18 awarded a $450 million contract to a team led by BAE Systems Plc and a $440 million contract to a team headed by General Dynamics for the technology development phase of the program.

SAIC Inc., which partnered with Boeing Co., Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall to develop a vehicle for the program, on Aug. 26 filed a protest with the GAO about the Army’s decision.

[JKM Mk2]

Namer? I thought one of the ideas was to keep weight down (although, given past history, that's an impossible dream!). But, if you are looking at Namer why not look at converting stored Abramms instead.

JKM

[Gubler, A.]

Namer? I thought one of the ideas was to keep weight down (although, given past history, that's an impossible dream!). But, if you are looking at Namer why not look at converting stored Abramms instead.

The weight reduction drive in the GCV and previous MGV were more about providing more weight proportion for armour than gross weight reduction. If you vehicle sans armour weighs only 20 tonnes compared to something similar that weighs 30 tonnes then you can layer on more armour for the same gross vehicle weight. 100% more for a GVW of 40 tonnes.

Like MGV the advanced versions of the GCV were to achieve this weight reduction via advanced power systems and remotely operated turrets. The impetuous now being on low cost and ease of production these desires are less driving.

As to the Namer it is actually a light weight vehicle if one removes all armour weight and benchmarks on the total protected internal volume. Lighter than a Bradley. It can even be lighter if you replace the spring coil suspension with lightweight hydro pneumatic units and the 1960s design low cost engine with a much lighter contemporary design.

The M1 Abrams is totally unsuited to conversion to an APC and to do so would be much costlier than new building a Namer and would remain with significant protection issues like dismount access. Perhaps some components could be reused from surplus M1s but this would just be the track and a few sub-systems.

[Goknub]

The Namer/Merkava has the engine at the front so an IFV conversion isn't too much drama, an M1 IFV would be too much trouble. Unless you drove the thing in reverse!

I'd bet the Puma doesn't have a hope in hell of getting up, the number of pax is too few and even then it's plenty cramped from what I've read. The South Korean K21 would be worth a look but it's just as likely this whole COTS thing is a ploy to force the local designs to lower their costs.

[Gubler, A.]

I'd bet the Puma doesn't have a hope in hell of getting up, the number of pax is too few and even then it's plenty cramped from what I've read. The South Korean K21 would be worth a look but it's just as likely this whole COTS thing is a ploy to force the local designs to lower their costs.

The Puma as offered to the US has a hull extension so additional volume for more dismounts. It has a very advanced engine, transmission, running gear system that should put it well in front of most other competitors only needing a longer hull and a US spec combat system to be compliant. The K21 has an all composite hull which may seem like a great idea to save weight but has significant questions about how you can maintain it. The Koreans may have a single use theory in mind facing a defensive battle against the DPRK but the US needs to keep vehicles active in combat theatre for a lot longer via counter insurgency campaigns.

I think the MOTS push it all about reducing cost and schedule risk. Of course they could have just built Gen II versions of the Bradley or an IFV version of the Crusader hull and had these vehicles in service five years ago but that isn’t the sort of decision the bureaucracy is likely to make.

[Goknub]

It would be good to know just how well a composite hull holds up over an extended period of time. I've had it relayed to me (can't remember where/who, maybe here?) that the Leo 1's armour had deteriorated due to time and the harsh conditions up north that even .50 cal could punch though it.

[buglerbilly]

I'd call BS on that comment.........the weather has sweet eff all to do with it and is only a factor IF the MBT is parked for far too long without protection/cover (which they are NOT).

The wear factor is on the belly armour and thats where regular checking is required, it was a major problem on some M-60's and M-48's albeit the US Army in Germany in particular had a rigorous checking and NDT programme.

Some armoured vehicles have applique belly armour fitted to overcome any perceived or actual problem and guarantee the best protection.

[Gubler, A.]

Its not an issue of how long the stuff lasts in weather but rather how you can maintain it when its constantly getting banged around. Panel beating is much harder with fibre glass than it is with steel.

[buglerbilly]

GAO Denies SAIC Protest of GCV Contract Award

By MICHAEL HOFFMAN and KATE BRANNEN

Published: 5 Dec 2011 21:11

The U.S. Government Accountability Office on Dec. 5 denied a protest of the Ground Combat Vehicle competition filed earlier this year by SAIC, with GAO saying the U.S. Army's decision to award two defense teams technology development contracts was fair and "reasonable."

SAIC officials previously said they felt the Army made "errors in the evaluation process" when the Army chose BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems, and not SAIC, to develop the service's next infantry fighting vehicle.

The Army surprised many when it chose to select only two defense teams when the service was authorized to award up to three contracts. Defense analysts said the Army chose two teams because of the pressure to shrink defense spending.

"We are disappointed to learn that the GAO did not sustain SAIC's protest, and as a result of that decision will not grant the requested relief to award a third GCV contract to SAIC's Team Full Spectrum," SAIC spokeswoman Melissa Koskovich said.

BAE Systems' team received $450 million and the General Dynamics Land Systems' team received $440 million to complete the technology development phase.

SAIC had said it felt the Army's decision was "unreasonable," but GAO disagreed.

"Our review of the record led us to conclude that the Army's evaluation decisions resulting in the award of only two contracts were reasonable, consistent with the stated evaluation criteria and did not improperly favor the successful offerors over SAIC," Ralph White, GAO's managing associate general counsel for procurement law, said in a statement.

SAIC led a team that included Chicago-based Boeing and Germany's Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall, which sought to use experience they gained working on the Army's now-canceled Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicle program and Germany's Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle. An SAIC spokeswoman said in August officials felt the Army chose not to appropriately integrate "existing, proven technology into a comprehensive solution."

Despite SAIC's protest, Army Secretary John McHugh said last month that the service will consider buying the Puma in place of the GCV.

"We can't do business as we've done in the past, just pull out the checkbook and write it because it's easy to do," McHugh said Nov. 2. "We have to make smart decisions - and if that smart decision is using an upgraded existing platform or … commercial off-the-shelf, or going to another country or ally and buying a program that they have developed and works well, then we'll do that."

The Army plans to spend $7.6 billion between 2012 and 2017 to field 1,800 vehicles to replace its Bradley fighting vehicle. Pentagon officials said the GCV program could grow up to $40 billion. Service leaders estimate each GCV will cost $13 million, a figure that includes spare parts.

[buglerbilly]

The Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Program: Background and Issues for Congress

(Source: Congressional Research Service; issued Dec. 27, 2012)

In April 2009, then Secretary of Defense Gates announced he intended to significantly restructure the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) program. The FCS was a multiyear, multibillion dollar program that had been underway since 2000 and was at the heart of the Army’s transformation efforts.

In lieu of the cancelled FCS Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV), the Army was directed to develop a Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) that would be relevant across the entire spectrum of Army operations and would incorporate combat lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army reissued a request for proposal (RFP) for the GCV on November 30, 2010 and planned to begin fielding the GCV by 2015-2017. On August 17, 2011, the GCV program was approved to enter the Technology Development Phase of the acquisition process and a day later, the Army awarded two technology development contracts: $439.7 million to the General Dynamics-led team and a second contract for $449.9 million to the BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman team.

The technology development phase is expected to last 24 months.

On August 23, 2011, the third team vying for the GCV technology development (TD) contract, SAIC-Boeing, filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) contending that there were errors in the evaluation process. On December 5, 2011, GAO denied the SAIC-Boeing GCV protest stating that the Army’s award of only two TD contracts was reasonable and consistent with the stated evaluation.

On December 6, 2011, the Army lifted the stop-work order that had been placed on the General Dynamics and BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman teams so that work could resume on the GCV.

The FY2012 budget request for the GCV was $884.387 million for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E), reflecting a seven-month delay in the program. The National Defense Authorization Act for FY2012 (H.R. 1540) authorized $449 million and stipulated that not more than 80 percent may be obligated or expended until the date when the Secretary of the Army submits a report to the congressional defense committees containing the plans of the Secretary of the Army for carrying out a dynamic analysis of alternatives update.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY2012 (H.R. 2055) recommended $449 million for the GCV due to the change in acquisition strategy (selecting two technology development vendors instead of three).

Potential issues for Congress include the role and need for the GCV in a potentially downsized Army that will likely have fewer Heavy Brigade Combat Teams (HBCTs). The Administration’s announcement of a strategic shift to the Asia-Pacific region and an ongoing, budget-driven, strategy review also presents questions as to the necessity for HBCTs and, by association, the GCV.

GCV affordability also remains a key consideration for Congress. The Army contends that the average unit production cost for the GCV will be between $9 - $10.5 million and the average unit production cost (including spare parts) will be between $11 - $13 million.

The Pentagon’s Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) estimates that the average unit production cost will be in the $16 to $17 million dollar range. If the CAPE’s cost estimate proves to be accurate, the Army would need an additional $7.2 billion to acquire 1,800 GCVs. This report will be updated.

Click here for the full report (17 pages in PDF format,) hosted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41597.pdf

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