The Marine Corps on Tuesday awarded BAE Systems and Science Applications International Corp. [SAIC] contracts worth a total $225 million to build prototypes of the service’s amphibious combat vehicle.
Each contract is for 13 vehicles with options for a further three that will enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the program. BAE’s contract is for $103.8 million, while SAIC’s is for $121.5 million. The companies were chosen from a field of five, leaving behind Lockheed Martin [LMT], General Dynamics [GD] and Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems (ADVS).
Both manufacturers are expected to start delivering their prototypes in the fall of 2016, “at which time the government will begin an aggressive and thorough test schedule,” according to the Marine Corps Program Executive Office Land Systems. The Marine Corps will move into the production phase in 2018 with a single vendor. Initial operational capability (IOC) is expected by the end of 2020 with all 204 ACV 1.1 vehicles fielded by the summer of 2023.
“After very rigorous and thorough evaluation of competitive proposals,” the Marine Corps will be awarded the contracts to “companies that clearly offered the best value selection for the Marine Corps,” Program Executive Officer William Taylor said Nov. 24. “Having obtained a successful milestone B decision last week, the ACV program team has demonstrated that they have met the rigorous requirements needed to take the program into the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase.”
ACV 1.1 will have some amphibious capability but will rely on complementary ship-to-shore connectors like the landing craft air cushion (LCAC) for long sea voyages. The primary capability the Marine Corps wanted in the first ACV iteration was the ability to launch and recover from an amphibious assault ship.
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. ACV 1.2 will introduce greater amphibious capability.
Finally, with ACV 2.0, the Marine Corps again will endeavor to buy a vehicle that can achieve a water speed significantly faster than either 1.1 or 1.2. This vehicle will be the eventual permanent replacement for the AAV fleet.
The Marine Corps has been searching for a vehicle to replace its amphibious assault vehicles (AAV) for some time and, in 2014, the service decided to pursue modified non-developmental vehicles to avoid the pitfalls that had previously bogged down procurement efforts.
To that end, the program was limited to vehicles that were production ready, rather than designing and building a vehicle from the ground up. When the requirements for ACV were first generated, the Marine Corps determined that no vehicle then in production would meet its needs. The program office, therefore, built its own ACV technology demonstrator and provided the data gathered from the effort to industry, Taylor said.
“I believe they made the most of it in refining their own offerings,” he said. “This effort not only informed industry as to the art of the possible, but also incentivized them to build their own vehicles that could address the full set of Marine Corps requirements and integrate them onto one vehicle.”
ACV 1.1 is the first phase of a three-part strategy to incrementally field new amphibious vehicles with ever increasing capabilities. The vehicle will be “an advanced generation 8-wheeled armored personnel carrier that will yield a balanced combination of performance, protection and payload all at an affordable price,” Taylor said.
Taylor said Marine Corps leadership mustered “collective willingness that helped in streamlining the program” and allowed for “knocking down acquisition barriers that will have the net effect of removing years of unnecessary schedule and program cost.”
The vehicles pitched for ACV 1.1 were tested thoroughly as part of a now-discarded Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC) test drive experiment. MPC was an effort to find a less-capable amphibious vehicle for land-based operations following an invasion from the sea.
The Marine Corps was so impressed by the capabilities demonstrated by the non-developmental MPC competitors that it decided to purchase one to satisfy its immediate need for an amphibious assault vehicle replacement.