thedrifter
02-20-07, 08:59 AM
Replacing the Humvee
Bomb-resistant vehicles wanted — fast
By Kris Osborn - Staff writer
Posted : February 26, 2007
The Marine Corps is dramatically increasing its purchase plans for bomb-resistant vehicles with an eye toward eventually replacing all its Humvees in Iraq with the V-hulled contraptions, Corps sources said.
The Corps plans to buy 3,700 of the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, up from its initial purchase plan of 1,022.
The move comes just weeks after the Corps launched its first bid to speed up delivery of the MRAPs.
Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va., placed a $55.4 million order Feb. 15 for 90 MRAPs with BAE Systems and a $67.4 million, 125-vehicle order with Force Dynamics, said SysCom spokesman Bill Johnson-Miles. And the Corps plans to hand out more similar-sized contracts in coming days, he said.
In January, the Corps ordered four test vehicles apiece from those firms and seven other contractors, dispensing $43 million contracts with 60-day deadlines. The tight schedule reflected the Corps’ earlier desire to acquire about 1,000 vehicles by year’s end.
After visits to production lines in February, SysCom officials decided to up their orders with BAE, which is basing its MRAP on its RG33 line of vehicles, and Force Dynamics, a joint venture between General Dynamics Land Systems and Ladson, S.C.-based Force Protection, which makes the armored Cougar and Buffalo vehicles.
“These two companies have shown their reliability to produce vehicles, meaning they meet Marine Corps Systems Command survivability, production number and delivery timeline requirements,” Johnson-Miles said.
He said the other seven companies may also receive more orders.
The Marine Corps is also managing the acquisition of MRAPs for the Army, which wants about 4,700, and the Navy, which intends to buy more than 500. In all, future MRAP orders could total $6 billion.
Capt. Jeff Landis, also a SysCom spokesman, said the command is dealing with nine contractors at the same time in order to get the vehicles tested and out to the fleet faster.
“The only way to do this is to be aggressive,” Landis said. “If we have more than one company doing it, then the production capacity is doubled or tripled. We could almost get 18 different vehicles which meet the requirements and survivability tests.”
Among the requirements, which have been vetted by U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan: a blast-deflecting V-shaped hull and raised chassis. Testers at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., will detonate bombs, mines and other weapons under each of the vehicles.
“There will be some blast tests and mobility tests to check the other automotive components such as slope, speed, towing capacity, suspension issues, transmissions,” Landis said.
The results could even affect decisions in the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program, the Pentagon’s effort to develop the next-generation Humvee, he said.
The Corps plans to buy the MRAPs in two variants: smaller Mine Resistant Utility Vehicles for transporting troops, and larger Joint Explosive Disposal Rapid Response Vehicles for larger groups leading convoys, ferrying the wounded and handling the disposal of explosives.
Besides BAE and the Force Dynamics team, the other contractors are Armor Holdings Aerospace and Defense Group; General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada; General Purpose Vehicles; International Military and Government; Oshkosh Truck Corp.; Protected Vehicles; and Textron Marine and Land Systems.
Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, chief of Systems Command, described the plan recently to the firms’ chief executive officers at Quantico.
The competing contractors:
•BAE Systems. The company has produced the RG33L prototype with six powered wheels, mine-resistant seats and a fire-suppression system.
BAE makes the Bradley fighting vehicle, M113 Armored Personnel Carrier and AAV7 Assault Amphibian Vehicle.
•Force Dynamics. Force Protection International makes the blast-resistant, heavily armored 23-ton Buffalo and the 14-ton Cougar, of which roughly 100 and 200, respectively, are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The firm is working to deliver 282 MRAPs awarded last fall as part of SysCom’s urgent-need sole-source selection, intended to field bomb-resistant vehicles as fast as possible.
Force Protection has since set up a joint venture with General Dynamics Land Systems to bid for the new contract, allowing the company to boost monthly production from 40 to 200 this year and 300 next year by using General Dynamics assembly lines, Force Protection Vice President Mike Aldrich said.
•GDLS-Canada. The firm has partnered with BAE to build mine-resistant vehicles based on the RG-31 Mk5. Under the deal, GDLS-Canada will manage the program and BAE Land Systems will build the vehicles in York, Pa.
The Army ordered 265 of them in October, said Ken Yama****a, corporate affairs manager with GDLS-Canada.
•International Military and Government. The Warrenville, Ill.-based company is a subsidiary of Navistar International, a company that makes 65 percent of U.S. school buses and has about 3,000 trucks in military service, including some heavily armored haulers serving in the Middle East.
•Oshkosh. The Wisconsin-based company is offering the 13-ton Bushmaster armored vehicle used by the Australian Defense Force and Dutch army.
Marketing manager Joquin Salas said the vehicle has endured 12,000 miles of reliability testing, and comes in command-and-control, ambulance and mortar-carrier versions.
•Protected Vehicles. The 2-year-old firm based in Charleston, S.C., says it is close to finishing the Golan, a mine-resistant demonstrator vehicle based on a four-wheel-drive heavily armored and protected vehicle with insensitive explosive reactive armor tiles manufactured by Israel-based Rafael.
The vehicle might be equipped with a lightweight armor composite called ShieldAll.
•Textron Marine and Land Systems. The company is offering two variants of its 30,000-pound Armored Security Vehicle M1117, in service in multiple locations. It is made with ceramic composite armor.
Textron officials say they have more than 600 vehicles in Iraq and have lost only three in combat over almost four years of roadside bomb and rocket-propelled grenade attacks.
“Our approach is a one-piece armor hull. We put a four-wheel suspension on top of that so you have a continuous solid V-shaped hull,” Senior Vice President Tom Walmsley said.
Textron has sold 63 ASVs to the Iraqi civil intervention force and has a new Army contract to make 700 ASV vehicles as part of an old 1,350-vehicle job. Textron makes 48 ASVs per month at its facility in New Orleans.
•Two others. Sealy, Texas-based Armor Holdings and General Purpose Vehicles, based in New Haven, Mich., have not responded to requests to discuss the vehicles they will offer.
Ellie
Bomb-resistant vehicles wanted — fast
By Kris Osborn - Staff writer
Posted : February 26, 2007
The Marine Corps is dramatically increasing its purchase plans for bomb-resistant vehicles with an eye toward eventually replacing all its Humvees in Iraq with the V-hulled contraptions, Corps sources said.
The Corps plans to buy 3,700 of the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, up from its initial purchase plan of 1,022.
The move comes just weeks after the Corps launched its first bid to speed up delivery of the MRAPs.
Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va., placed a $55.4 million order Feb. 15 for 90 MRAPs with BAE Systems and a $67.4 million, 125-vehicle order with Force Dynamics, said SysCom spokesman Bill Johnson-Miles. And the Corps plans to hand out more similar-sized contracts in coming days, he said.
In January, the Corps ordered four test vehicles apiece from those firms and seven other contractors, dispensing $43 million contracts with 60-day deadlines. The tight schedule reflected the Corps’ earlier desire to acquire about 1,000 vehicles by year’s end.
After visits to production lines in February, SysCom officials decided to up their orders with BAE, which is basing its MRAP on its RG33 line of vehicles, and Force Dynamics, a joint venture between General Dynamics Land Systems and Ladson, S.C.-based Force Protection, which makes the armored Cougar and Buffalo vehicles.
“These two companies have shown their reliability to produce vehicles, meaning they meet Marine Corps Systems Command survivability, production number and delivery timeline requirements,” Johnson-Miles said.
He said the other seven companies may also receive more orders.
The Marine Corps is also managing the acquisition of MRAPs for the Army, which wants about 4,700, and the Navy, which intends to buy more than 500. In all, future MRAP orders could total $6 billion.
Capt. Jeff Landis, also a SysCom spokesman, said the command is dealing with nine contractors at the same time in order to get the vehicles tested and out to the fleet faster.
“The only way to do this is to be aggressive,” Landis said. “If we have more than one company doing it, then the production capacity is doubled or tripled. We could almost get 18 different vehicles which meet the requirements and survivability tests.”
Among the requirements, which have been vetted by U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan: a blast-deflecting V-shaped hull and raised chassis. Testers at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., will detonate bombs, mines and other weapons under each of the vehicles.
“There will be some blast tests and mobility tests to check the other automotive components such as slope, speed, towing capacity, suspension issues, transmissions,” Landis said.
The results could even affect decisions in the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program, the Pentagon’s effort to develop the next-generation Humvee, he said.
The Corps plans to buy the MRAPs in two variants: smaller Mine Resistant Utility Vehicles for transporting troops, and larger Joint Explosive Disposal Rapid Response Vehicles for larger groups leading convoys, ferrying the wounded and handling the disposal of explosives.
Besides BAE and the Force Dynamics team, the other contractors are Armor Holdings Aerospace and Defense Group; General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada; General Purpose Vehicles; International Military and Government; Oshkosh Truck Corp.; Protected Vehicles; and Textron Marine and Land Systems.
Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, chief of Systems Command, described the plan recently to the firms’ chief executive officers at Quantico.
The competing contractors:
•BAE Systems. The company has produced the RG33L prototype with six powered wheels, mine-resistant seats and a fire-suppression system.
BAE makes the Bradley fighting vehicle, M113 Armored Personnel Carrier and AAV7 Assault Amphibian Vehicle.
•Force Dynamics. Force Protection International makes the blast-resistant, heavily armored 23-ton Buffalo and the 14-ton Cougar, of which roughly 100 and 200, respectively, are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The firm is working to deliver 282 MRAPs awarded last fall as part of SysCom’s urgent-need sole-source selection, intended to field bomb-resistant vehicles as fast as possible.
Force Protection has since set up a joint venture with General Dynamics Land Systems to bid for the new contract, allowing the company to boost monthly production from 40 to 200 this year and 300 next year by using General Dynamics assembly lines, Force Protection Vice President Mike Aldrich said.
•GDLS-Canada. The firm has partnered with BAE to build mine-resistant vehicles based on the RG-31 Mk5. Under the deal, GDLS-Canada will manage the program and BAE Land Systems will build the vehicles in York, Pa.
The Army ordered 265 of them in October, said Ken Yama****a, corporate affairs manager with GDLS-Canada.
•International Military and Government. The Warrenville, Ill.-based company is a subsidiary of Navistar International, a company that makes 65 percent of U.S. school buses and has about 3,000 trucks in military service, including some heavily armored haulers serving in the Middle East.
•Oshkosh. The Wisconsin-based company is offering the 13-ton Bushmaster armored vehicle used by the Australian Defense Force and Dutch army.
Marketing manager Joquin Salas said the vehicle has endured 12,000 miles of reliability testing, and comes in command-and-control, ambulance and mortar-carrier versions.
•Protected Vehicles. The 2-year-old firm based in Charleston, S.C., says it is close to finishing the Golan, a mine-resistant demonstrator vehicle based on a four-wheel-drive heavily armored and protected vehicle with insensitive explosive reactive armor tiles manufactured by Israel-based Rafael.
The vehicle might be equipped with a lightweight armor composite called ShieldAll.
•Textron Marine and Land Systems. The company is offering two variants of its 30,000-pound Armored Security Vehicle M1117, in service in multiple locations. It is made with ceramic composite armor.
Textron officials say they have more than 600 vehicles in Iraq and have lost only three in combat over almost four years of roadside bomb and rocket-propelled grenade attacks.
“Our approach is a one-piece armor hull. We put a four-wheel suspension on top of that so you have a continuous solid V-shaped hull,” Senior Vice President Tom Walmsley said.
Textron has sold 63 ASVs to the Iraqi civil intervention force and has a new Army contract to make 700 ASV vehicles as part of an old 1,350-vehicle job. Textron makes 48 ASVs per month at its facility in New Orleans.
•Two others. Sealy, Texas-based Armor Holdings and General Purpose Vehicles, based in New Haven, Mich., have not responded to requests to discuss the vehicles they will offer.
Ellie