By Ann Roosevelt
Raytheon [RTN] and BlackwaterUSA have come together as “Team Innovation” to compete for the Army-Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), officials said.
Raytheon decided to get into the competition because of its work as a major systems integrator, a core business, John Manning, Raytheon JLTV program manager, told Defense Daily in an interview. Additionally, the company found it is the original manufacturer of eight of 18 government-directed and provided pieces of equipment for the JLTV.
After a period of analysis and consideration, Manning said, the company decided, “We can do this.”
Searching for partners, Raytheon explored JLTV with Blackwater, which has operational experience, and user insight into what is needed in a new vehicle and what could be improved, Manning said.
The team submitted its proposal April 14, as did the other six competing teams: Lockheed Martin [LMT] and BAE Systems, General Dynamics [GD] and AM General, Boeing [BA] and Textron [TXT], Northrop Grumman [NOC], Oshkosh [OSK] and Plasan, BAE and Navistar [NAVZ], and Force Protection [FRPT] and DRS Technologies [DRS].
By the end of the month, the service is expected to choose three or more teams for a period of technology demonstration.
Manning said what sets their proposal apart is that “we embraced the fact that this is a technology demonstration phase, so what we did is we went out and used our open air business model, which is a business model where you go out and find new technologies, maybe a less mature company…then put them under our maturity of a large company like Raytheon and we can bring these technologies to market,” Manning said.
Raytheon looked for new, emerging technologies and incorporated them into its proposal.
“We understand that at the end of the day the goal of the technology demonstration phase is to look at and evaluate new technologies so that the Army, the government, can write a specification so that we can then go ahead,” he said. “We didn’t look at it as here’s our solution, it’s ready for production, you should buy this now. We really looked at it as we’re going to show you some different things to evaluate.”
Raytheon looked at what the solder and Marine want and need, considering such things as how to get in and out of the vehicle, visibility, comfort, armor protection, maintenance.
Blackwater would be a subcontractor on the program. Manning said the two companies area already working very closely–with the Grizzly line of vehicles. JLTV would be based on the Mk VII vehicle. “They’re a very, very agile company.”
The team also includes the U.K.-based Jankel Group. It has a proprietary blast-mitigating seat; an exclusive innovation the team will show the Army and Marines. Jankel “developed it and it just went into fielding I believe in April with the U.K. Ministry of Defense. The seat is fully qualified through independent tests and certified road-worthy seat for the European Union requirements, he said.
“What’s nice about our proposal is the way all the little innovations we did add up as an aggregate, a very different way of looking at a vehicle,” Manning said.
BlackwaterUSA’s Executive Vice President Bill Mathews leads new manufacturing products–such as Grizzly. Blackwater was drawn into building armored vehicles because some of their personnel were killed in Iraq, and they found the type of vehicle they wanted to protect them didn’t exist.
Blackwater found itself in the same quandary as the U.S. military before the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) program started, he told Defense Daily. To get what they wanted, in late 2005 the company began designing and building its own vehicle and did not intend at first to sell it to the military.
After a few months, Blackwater found it had a very capable vehicle (Defense Daily, Nov. 7, 2006).
“The armored system we developed was as capable as anything else the government was guying,” Mathews said. “At that point we decided we’d not only make them for our guys but then offer them for sale to the military.”
“Two years later we have two vehicle manufacturing plants and we’ve developed nine different variants of our armored personnel carrier,” he said.
Blackwater is in the low-rate initial production phase on the Grizzly and still in source selection on the MRAP 2 contract, and is going forward toward JLTV with Raytheon.
The security trucks Blackwater designed and sent forward to Iraq were successful, are still in use today, and were precursors for their MRAP vehicles, Mathews said. Grizzly Mark VI, VII and VIII are offered for the JLTV program.
All truck designers have been working on innovations, he said. “We all have worked very hard to develop innovations in our armor, in our hull design, in our C41 systems, we’ve all come up with something we think works,” Mathews said.
The Blackwater vehicle is built to run with diesel, but have also designed a hybrid propulsion system that should easily and quickly fit into our JLTV hull. There are some technology gaps that keep hybrid from being viable today, but it coming, and likely soon, he said.
One manufacturing facility is on Blackwater’s training facility in Moyock, N.C., with off-road and test tracks right on the property. This has really helped in armor development, he said. “We can sit down in the morning and work on armor designs and have them built in the manufacturing building by lunch, and have them shot 10 times by dinner,” Mathews said. “Then go back and change it. Our design loop I think is much, much shorter than most peoples…everything is right here.”
The company has a plan for JLTV manufacturing. While not disclosing details, Mathews said in the Moyock vicinity are several closed automotive plants, and skilled autoworkers. Some of those workers are building Blackwater vehicles today. The company is also close to shipyards and ports in Norfolk, Va., with its large worker base.
Considering Blackwater expertise in vehicles, people tend to forget company founder-owner Erik Prince comes from a family involved in the automotive business for 30 years, Mathews said. At one time, Prince Automotive was one of the biggest auto parts suppliers in Michigan, supplying the big three automakers. After that, Prince owned Baring Truck, the fastest growing truck manufacturer in the United States in 1996-1997.