BAE Systems recently secured an $82 million contract to refurbish U.S. Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicles for use by the service’s Brazilian counterpart, the company announced December 21.
The deal calls for 23 upgraded AAV-7A1 vehicles for the Brazilian Marine Corps, according to a statement from BAE Systems. The tracked amphibious vehicles will have more powerful engines and drive train and suspension upgrades returning them to a baseline performance equal to that of the AAV7A1, BAE Systems said. The vehicles also are more mobile and more easily repaired than the original AAV, the company said.
BAE Systems calls the upgraded vehicles the reliability, availability and maintainability/rebuild standard (RAM/RS) variants of the U.S. Marine Corps’ workhorse ship-to-shore armored personnel carrier.
“These new vehicles will have major capability enhancements, which will give the Brazilian military an amphibious vehicle with improved speed and reliability beyond the current configuration,” Deepak Bazaz, director of new and amphibious vehicles at BAE Systems, said in a statement. “We have a strong track record of supporting the Brazilian military and will continue that close working relationship throughout this program.”
Under the terms of the contract, BAE Systems will provide 23 AAV7A1 RAM/RS vehicles and supply all tools and test equipment to support vehicle maintenance. The company will also help maintain the vehicles until Brazil can establish an indigenous capability and train maintainers. BAE Systems also will provide spare parts and field service support and train Brazilian Marines to operate the vehicles.
All of the vehicles will be refurbished AAVs taken from the U.S. Marine Corps fleet and upgraded for the Brazilian military.
Work on the contract will take place at BAE Systems’ York, Pa., facility. Production is anticipated to start in June with vehicle deliveries beginning in February 2017. Final delivery to Brazil is expected to take place by the end of 2017, when the training and support for the vehicles will begin.
“BAE Systems has served the Brazilian military for more than 15 years and is also working on other vehicle enhancement programs here, such as the Brazilian Army’s upgrade of its M113B vehicles to the M113A2 Mk1 configuration,” said Marco Caffe, the company’s general manager for Brazil. “In the fall of 2015, we completed our 150th M113 upgrade.”
BAE Systems is the incumbent manufacturer of the Marine Corps AAV fleet. However, Science Applications International Corporation [SAIC] is on contract to provide similar upgrades and retrofit to a portion of the Marine Corps AAV fleet that will remain in its fleet until the service’s new amphibious combat vehicle (ACV) comes online in sufficient numbers.
SAIC and BAE Systems were awarded just over $100 million each to build ACVs during the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the program that will eventually replace a portion of the AAV fleet with technologically superior wheeled ship-to-shore connectors. Each company is on the hook for 16 prototypes that will be tested by the Marine Corps beginning in the third quarter of 2016. Work on the vehicles will take place at BAE Systems’ facilities in Quantico, Virginia; San Jose, California; and York, Pennsylvania.
General Dynamics [GD] has protested being left out of the EMD phase of ACV. The company claims the Marine Corps asked for an amphibious combat vehicle (ACV) with particular capabilities then measured competitors by a different set of standards, prompting a protest of November contract awards to two other companies. Neither Lockheed Martin [LMT] nor Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems – both of which also lost out on ACV contracts – decided to protest the Marine Corps’ decision.