As a smaller service with limited resources, the Marine Corps usually follows the Army’s lead when buying ground combat equipment, but the roles have reversed with a new light tank for Army infantry.

The Army needs a relatively light, highly mobile armored vehicle with hefty firepower for its infantry brigade combat teams (IBCTs) but does not have the time or resources to wait for industry to design and build one on a traditional acquisition timeline, said Maj. Gen. David Bassett, program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems.

“In any program, you either going to pay industry to design it or you’re not,” Bassett said. “What we have said with MPF (Mobile Protected Firepower) is we’re not willing for you to go through a lengthy, bottoms-up design process. What we are willing to do is give you some time on your own to get a design ready to compete and then we will evaluate that into a fairly rapid engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase.”

An M551A1 Sheridan light tank during Operation Desert Shield.
An M551A1 Sheridan light tank during Operation Desert Shield.

Bassett likened the strategy to the tack the Marine Corps is on acquiring a new Amphibious Combat Vehicle. The service asked industry to assemble and pitch non-developmental vehicles that combine mature technologies into a swimming wheeled troop carrier that meets most, if not all, of their requirements. So far the program is sailing smoothly into EMD with two vendors.

“They laid out a program where, really, they didn’t pay industry to design very much and asked them to deliver within a fairly short period of time,” Bassett said. “We’re trying to model that same kind of strategy.”

There are no formal requirements published for MPF, but when the Army solicits bids it wants mature, non-developmental, production-ready vehicles. Several interested vendors showed up to AUSA with self-funded technology demonstrators or older designs repurposed or modified to fall within the requirement range the Army has advertised.

General Dynamics [GD] attached a lightweight M1 Abrams turret to an Ajax personnel carrier chassis and displayed the resultant medium tank at the show (Defense Daily, Oct. 4).

BAE parked an M8 Armored Gun System light tank, originally made by United Defense outside the Convention Center and even got Gen. David Perkins, chief of Training and Doctrine Command, to climb on it. The M8 was initially designed to replace the M551 Sheridan light tank but was eventually canceled.

Industry in August was privy to some details on the high- and low-end of expected MPF capabilities. The Army wants to give industry time to provide feedback on what solutions are available in the near term to meet some, if not all of those requirements and to prepare for a “fairly rapid” acquisition and production process, Bassett said.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley outlined the capability set MPF should bring to infantry brigades. Some basic requirements can be deduced from the missions that the vehicle will have to accomplish alongside dismounted, distributed industry brigades.

“What is needed, especially for the lighter units, is a mobile capability that can go toe-to-toe with your higher-end potential adversaries and survive,” Milley said. “That’s really what mobile protected firepower is all about. It’s … a capability that can be rapidly deployable from a continental base, can operate expeditionary and when it gets on the ground it has tactical mobility, survivability and lethality. Those are its fundamental requirements.”

Industry was told the maximum vehicle weight was 32 tons, at which extreme it would not be air-droppable. It also must have at least a 50mm cannon, but the requirement range was intentionally wide so it would draw a variety of potential designs, Bassett said.

“We wanted to make sure we left our requirements at this stage broad enough that we understood the full breadth of what might be possible,” Bassett said. “We are not saying we want a light tank. We are saying we want a system for the infantry brigade combat team that offers mobility, protection and firepower and we’re giving the technical requirements of how much mobility, how much protection and how much firepower.”

Col. Jim Schirmer, project manager for armored combat vehicles, elaborated on what MPF might look like and be expected to do. It will be sent into generally austere environments where the infantry goes but must be able to clear narrow streets and bridges that cannot support an Abrams tank but still be tracked so it can go over rubble and burned-out cars and the like.

MPF almost certainly will be armed with either a 105mm or 120mm main gun, Schirmer said.

DRS Technologies and Leonardo have teamed to offer a turret that will accommodate both a 105mm cannon and a 120mm cannon, depending on which one the Army decides to use.

The HITFACT II 105/120mm Lightweight Turret system is especially designed for light or medium-weight tank platforms with wheels or tracked mobility. 

“The Army really doesn’t want to pay to develop a suite of ammunition,” Schirmer said. “The desire is to keep the weapon to something that is already in the Army inventory.”