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15 Mar 16. JLTV Savings Could Speed Up Fielding for US Army.
Anticipated savings within the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program could allow the US Army to field its Humvee replacement earlier and quicker, the Army’s program executive officer for combat support and combat service support said.
Those savings are a result of a savvy acquisition strategy.
“We believe we are going to save between 10 and 15 percent from our budgeted amount on the acquisition of JLTV,” Scott Davis told a group of reporters Tuesday at the Association of the US Army’s Global Force Symposium.
The Army then decided to take “any resources that were available from that and reapply it to the program to help move it forward,” he added. “So we expect if that happens that instead of finishing fielding in the early 2040 timeframe, will be in the mid-2030s because we will be able to apply those savings to the vehicle and build them that much faster and it ends up saving about a net of five years,” Davis explained.
The JLTV program is finally able to move ahead after work stopped on the program for 98 days while Lockheed Martin protested the Army’s award to Oshkosh Defense to build the vehicles. Lockheed then filed a lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims because it claimed newly supplied Army information that emerged toward the end of the GAO’s protest process was enough to move the protest to court. Oshkosh did not have to stop work while the lawsuit played out in court. Lockheed dropped its lawsuit last month.
The Army expects to field the first vehicle delivery in October. The service is on track to reach a full-rate production decision in 2019.
Oshkosh’s vice president for Global Integrated Product Support, Mike Ivy, said the company is delivering its first trucks to the Army in September and is prepared to deliver at any rate the Army requests.
Davis said the JLTV program is serving as a model, not only in Army acquisition, but on several occasions at higher levels. The Pentagon’s acquisition chief Frank Kendall has asked the program managers to talk about how the acquisition strategy was implemented, he noted. The strategy “drove some vendor behaviors based on the way we did source selection,” and led to incentives, Davis said.
The JLTV savings can be attributed to “stable requirements, mature technologies and a very, very good competition between three great industry partners that all had tremendous offers. All three of those things sort of converged to give us that kind of a benefit,” David said.
Oshkosh beat out Humvee-maker AM General and Lockheed for the $6.7bn low-rate initial production contract award to build 16,901 vehicles, but the entire contract is expected to be worth up to $30bn. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Defense News)
15 Mar 16. Russia’s First Post-Syria Move: Stronger T-72 Battle Tanks. While the world has been focused on Russia’s air campaign in Syria, Moscow continues its military modernization closer to home. The Kremlin is planning on modernizing one hundred and fifty additional Soviet-era T-72B main battle tanks to the T-72B3M standard. The upgraded vehicles would offer performance comparable to the much more modern T-90, but for a fraction of the price.
While Russia operates well over five hundred modern T-90A and T-90AM main battle tanks, the bulk of Moscow’s ground forces rely on the venerable T-72 and its numerous derivatives. In order to upgrade its land forces quickly, especially during a time of economic distress, the Kremlin is modernizing the older main battle tank even as work continues on the newest T-14 Armata tanks.
According to Uralvagonzavod deputy general director Alex Zharich, who spoke to the Russian-language daily Izvestia, Russia plans to spend 2.5bn rubles to upgrade one hundred and fifty T-72Bs to the new B3M standard fo