The Marine Corps plans to cull the field of five companies competing to build the its next amphibious vehicle to just two early next week.
A spokesman for the Marine Corps land systems program office on Tuesday told Defense Daily that the decision on which two companies would move on to the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the amphibious combat vehicle (ACV) program would be made early in the week of Nov. 23.
A defense acquisition board must first meet and approve the decision made by the Marine Corps on which vehicles to take to EMD. The service will buy 16 ACVs from each of the companies chosen for EMD.
The program pits heavyweight contractors Lockheed Martin [LMT], BAE Systems, General Dynamics [GD] and SAIC [SAIC] against each other and longshot contender Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems, or AVDS, which has partnered with Textron [TXT] and IR Technologies. With the award of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle contract to Oshkosh [OSK], ACV stands as one of the few major ground vehicle programs in the works.
The program to replace the aging Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) has been long delayed while the Marine Corps ironed out what it required in a ship-to-shore armored troop carrier. Since the service decided on a phased approach beginning with a non-developmental ACV 1.1, budget cuts have delayed progress and could still, Paxton said.
A single company will go on to produce about 200 ACV 1.1 vehicles beginning in 2018. The Marine Corps wants to buy about 204 ACV 1.1 vehicles at a unit cost of up to $7.5 million. Plans are to equip six battalions by 2023 with ACVs while modernizing 392 existing AAVs with survivability and communications upgrades. SAIC is on contract for the upgrade work.