Land 121 Phase 4 (Protected Military Vehicle-Light, PMV-L) has three acquisition options: US JLTV program; MSA (locally manufactured supported in Australia) and Market Available.
Solicitation for the last option will be done in parallel to the development of the JLTV and MSA options.
ADM’s view is that this market available, military-off-the-shelf approach, can be seen essentially as a hedge against either or both of the other two options failing to produce the PMV-L capability sought.
Now the US Army has done likewise, opening the door to increased competition in the JLTV program last week by releasing a request for information for off-theshelf solutions that could contend with prototypes already produced by three teams under contract to build JLTVs.
“The RFI was released to gather information as part of our market research which is required to support our milestone B decision,” according to a May 5 email from JLTV spokeswoman Ashley John.
“We are simply looking to see if there are any other ‘off-the-shelf’ vehicle solution(s) that we may not have already explored to ensure we understand the ‘art of the possible’ that industry has to offer.”
The JLTV program, run jointly by the Army and Marine Corps, has already awarded technology-development contracts to three different industry groups: a team composed of Lockheed Martin, BAE Armor Holdings and Northrop Grumman, a partnership between AM General and General Dynamics called General Tactical Vehicles, and a team of Navistar andBAE of York, PA.
Oshkosh Defense has recently confirmed that the company also plans to compete for the upcoming engineering and manufacturing development phase, and Force Protection is also eying the program.
Only two contractors will be allowed to continue into the defence-funded EMD phase when contracts are awarded in early 2012.
However, the JLTV program has been troubled by schedule delays and the flagging interest of Marine Corps officials, some of whom have said the current prototype vehicles are too heavy.