The Army plans to reevaluate the $62 billion in cost estimates for its Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) and Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) programs per recommendations from a new Government Accountability Office report.
GAO officials wrote the Army concurred with the report’s call to better account for uncertainties with its combat vehicle modernization programs, noting the service’s roughly $23 billion spent on earlier attempts that didn’t pan out.
“While trade-offs may be necessary to facilitate rapid development, more consistent application of GAO’s leading practices for providing cost estimates that reflect uncertainty and conducting timely systems engineering reviews could improve Army’s ability to provide insight to decision makers and deliver capability to the warfighter on time and at or near expected costs,” GAO wrote in its report.
The report notes the Army’s initial acquisition plans estimate the total life-cycle cost for OMFV, the Bradley replacement program, at $46 billion and MPF, the service’s new light tank, at $16 billion.
“For MPF and OMFV, program documentation does not clearly communicate the uncertainty associated with projected costs and limits the programs’ ability to gather the knowledge to effectively mitigate risks associated with system design maturity,” officials wrote in the report. “In the early stages of program development, uncertainty about technical specifications and system design translates into uncertainty about projected costs.”
GAO said the recommendation to go back and account for those uncertainties is aimed at ensuring the programs don’t meet the same fate as the failed Future Combat Systems and Ground Combat Vehicle efforts, which cost around $23 billion.
The Army previously canceled its original acquisition effort for OMFV, which faced scrutiny after a single bid sample from General Dynamics [GD] was accepted for the program’s prototype phase.
A draft RFP for the restarted OMFV competition was released last month, with plans to award up to five contracts next June for digital design prototypes (Defense Daily, July 17).
In December 2018, the Army selected BAE Systems and GD to each build 12 MPF prototypes, with a final downselect decision to a single vendor planned for FY ‘22 (Defense Daily, Dec. 17 2018).