The Army will start fielding its new light tanks for infantry brigades in 2025, with officials pushing vendors BAE Systems and General Dynamics [GD] to prove their vehicle offerings are able to survive in “the worst conditions you can imagine.”

Senior Army leaders told reporters Monday evening the service is focused on a rapid prototyping effort for its Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) program with the first test vehicles to be delivered in 14 months and then put through full-scale combat testing with soldiers.

BAE Systems’ Mobile Protected Firepower offering

“This capability is much needed in our infantry forces,” Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team, told reporters. “There is no precision munition to remove bunkers from the battlefield, to shoot into buildings in dense urban terrain to allow infantrymen to close with the enemy. So this is a huge need, and it’s a huge advancement toward the way we want to fight our future wars.”

BAE Systems and General Dynamics were picked to deliver 12 prototype vehicles each for MPF, with a final downselect decision scheduled for FY ’22 (Defense Daily, Dec. 17). The companies beat out SAIC [SAIC] to move forward in the program.

“Our offering integrates innovative technology that reduces the burden on the crew into a compact design deployable in areas that are hard to reach,” Deepak Bazaz, BAE Systems’ director of combat vehicle programs, said in a statement. “We’re confident our design meets the requirements and the unique capabilities the [Infantry Brigade Combat Teams] needs.”

The Army will purchase a total of 504 vehicles for MPF, and begin with low-rate initial production orders valued at potentially $968 million.

“We are excited about this opportunity to provide the U.S. Army a large-caliber, highly mobile combat vehicle to support the infantry brigade combat teams,” Don Kotchman, vice president of General Dynamics Land Systems’ U.S. market, said in a statement. “We are especially proud of this new opportunity to serve in the Infantry Brigade Combat Team formation, which we have not done until now.”

A General Dynamics Land Systems Griffin II prototype vehicle. GD was selected to produce similar, medium-weight, large-caliber prototype vehicles for the U.S. Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower program. Photo: GD.

David Dopp, project manager for MPF, said the Army’s approach is now focused on acquiring a platform with the latest technological innovations requiring minimal development and able to fight in an increasingly complex battlefield, including urban environments.

“This is an integration of mature technologies. The vehicles don’t exist but the technologies, the pieces, the systems, the subsystems, they do exist. So it’s about integration,” Dopp told reporters.

Delivery of prototype vehicles will begin in early 2020, and occur in increments of two over the course of four to five months, according to Dopp.

The Army will conduct basic mobility and survivability testing before putting MPF through a new Soldier Vehicle Assessment event, where Infantry Brigade Combat Teams will go through full combat exercises to test the vehicles.

“This isn’t driving down the road looking for IEDs. This is American soldiers engaged in full-scale combat executing the missions we expect to use the Mobile Protected Firepower in,” Coffman said. “The requirements associated with this will allow U.S. forces to disrupt, breach and break through [adversaries’] security zones and defensive belts to allow our infantrymen and women to close in and destroy the enemy on the objective.”

Dopp added the program does not have formal Preliminary or Critical Design Review periods, which he said will likely cut a year and a half to two years off the entire process.

Officials provided an update on a previously key component to future operations with MPF, noting the light tanks are no longer intended to be air droppable.

Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems, said instead the new tanks will be transported on C-17s.

Coffman said he thought it made more sense to off load the MPFs from a C-17 and then use them to set the battlespace, rather than dropping them from an aircraft.