The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps on Oct. 29 announced the selection
of three companies to continue development on the composites-intensive
Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program. Together, the three
contracts are worth a combined total of
approximately $166 million. They have been awarded to: BAE Systems Land
& Armament Systems – Ground Systems Division (Santa Clara, Calif.);
General Tactical Vehicles, a joint venture of General Dynamics Land
Systems Inc. and AM General LLC, (Sterling Heights, Mich.); and
Lockheed Martin Systems Integration – Owego (Owego, N.Y.).
The JLTV is a joint program between the Army, the Marine Corps and U.S.
Special Operations Command (SOC), where the Army has been designated as the
lead agency. The JTLV family of vehicles will provide the Joint Services with a
balance between three key factors: performance, payload and protection,
said Col. John Myers, project manager for the Army's Joint Combat
Support Services
The
technology development contract will be 27 months in duration. The
first 15 months require competitors to develop and deliver seven JLTV
variants, four trailers, four blast hulls, and ballistic panels that
will be used for testing. The remaining 12 months are scheduled for
government testing. The Technology Development phase will then be
followed by a Systems Design and Development phase and, later, by a
production contract.
While the winners of the contracts will ultimately produce refined
prototypes of the JLTV and its companion trailers at the end of the TD
phase, Myers said the Army's current intention is to hold another full
and open competition for the System Development and Demonstration (SDD)
phase which will allow all interested parties to compete.
Right now, the Army, Marine Corps and SOC are refining their respective
tactical vehicle strategies, therefore a final planned quantity has not
yet been determined, Petermann said. However, for production
cost-estimating and other analyses, the request for proposals included
a projected production quantity of approximately 60,000 systems to be
delivered over an eight-year span.