JLTV program faces delays

Now under test and evaluation at the Monegeetta Proving Ground in Victoria are the prototype vehicles of the three contenders for the Land 121 Phase 4 Manufactured and Supported in Australia (MSA) option.

Each received $9 million in development funding for their solutions.

To refresh your memory, the contenders are:

• Thales Australia, offering its all-new Hawkei which draws on the technology and expertise it developed on the Bushmaster program;

• General Dynamics Land Systems (Australia), offering the proven Eagle IV, which is already serving in Afghanistan; and

• Force Protection Europe offering its innovative Ocelot, which was chosen by the British Army to satisfy its very similar Light Protected Patrol Vehicle (LPPV) requirement.

While it seems likely that Australia will continue its participation with the JLTV program through the Engineering Manufacturing and Development (EMD) phase as it did with the Technology Development phase (at a cost of $40 million), we suspect that irrespective of this country’s involvement, the EMD contenders - whose numbers could include the MSA contenders - will almost certainly include Right Hand Operation (RHO) in their vehicle designs against the strong possibility that Australia (and others) would acquire 1,300 RHO JLTVs assuming they prove better value in most respects than the MSA solution.

But if Defence was expecting that its evaluation of tenders for the MSA option would lead to a preferred solution about the time that a winning tender from JLTV would emerge, this is not going to happen as the EMD milestones, from contract award to completion, have extended to 48 months.

This means that a JLTV candidate may not be available for comparison until around 2016.

The new Protected Mobility Vehicle (Light) [PMV(L)] was due to enter service around 2016-18 but we may now see an initial operating capability (IOC) deferred until around 2019- 20.

So? As old Defence hands might say: Que Sera, Sera.