AM General is focused on executing contracts for its Blast Resistant Vehicle-Off Road (BRV-O) vehicle, selected to compete for the Army-Marine Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), its Ground Mobility Vehicle offering and a Right-Hand Drive Humvee, a company official said.
“The focus of the work right now is on JLTV to execute the contract we received 22 August,” said Christopher Vanslager, vice president, Business Development and Program Management at AM General.
The company has gone through initial meetings where they sit down with the government and go through the scope of work and explain how they’ll deliver the vehicles for test, he said. Some design meetings are still to come so the government can understand precisely what AM General is doing from the design standpoint.
The better the government understands company production processes, the more confidence they will have that the company will be able to deliver as required, he said.
Materials are on order, and once trucks are starting to be built AM General will start internal testing with the government right there with them, Vanslager said. “We want to be fully transparent.”
The point is to make sure that seven to 10 months into the work the vehicles will be fully ready to go into test.
“We’re on track, we’re making our deliveries, we’re moving right along and we see no problems with delivering our vehicles,” Vanslager said. “We feel comfortable because of our past 50 years of experience and 30 years of high volume production, which we bring to the table and lowers government risk.
Receiving an engineering and manufacturing development contract in late August, AM General is competing with Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Oshkosh [OSK] on the contract where each contractor must provide 22 prototypes for government testing (Defense Daily, Aug. 23).
AM General is also competing on the follow-on Ground Mobility Vehicle 1.1 program. “We’re building it for rapidly deployable forces,” Vanslager said. The company made the initial product, GMV 1.0, and its 1.1 offering is derived from the earlier product and based on the company’s years of experience working with U.S. and international customers. The AM General follow on is more transportable, offers improved performance and greater automotive performance, and is very fuel efficient, something of interest to all customers.
After considering international customers, AM General found that 73 countries use right-hand drive. The company’s High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle is in use in 56 of those countries, Vanslager said. Requests for right-hand drive led the company to redesign the steering mechanisms and moved dials and gauges on the instrument panel for a true right-hand drive capability.
Highlighting company innovation, diversification and global reach, AM General will have on display a JLTV, right-hand drive HMMWV and GMV 1.1 offering among other items.