By Emelie Rutherford
An official overseeing the purchase of new all-terrain mine-resistant trucks said yesterday he is “pretty confident” Oshkosh Corp. [OSK] will build all 5,244 planned vehicles over the next nine months without enlisting competitors’ help.
Oshkosh on Tuesday beat four other truck bidders that hoped to build the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV); the Oshkosh, Wis. truck builder received a $1.05 billion order from the Army for 2,244 of the trucks intended for troops in Afghanistan. Oshkosh will be tapped for an additional 3,000 M-ATVs before the end of July, Marine Corps Systems Command head Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan told reporters yesterday in a conference call.
Ordering those additional vehicles would satisfy the Pentagon’s requirement for 5,244 M-ATVs. Of that total, 2,598 are slated for the Army and 1,565 are pegged for the Marine Corps, with smaller numbers also going to the Navy, Air Force, and Special Operations command.
Brogan said Oshkosh was the “clear winner” in the M-ATV competition that also included BAE Systems‘ Global Tactical Systems business; BAE’s U.S. Combat Systems unit; Navistar Defense LLC [NAV]; and Force Dynamics LLC, a joint venture between Force Protection, Inc. [FRPT] and General Dynamics Corp. [GD].
Brogan, also the program executive officer for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) effort underway since 2006, said during the source-selection process Oshkosh’s test vehicle showed the most survivability, which was a major technical factor that was weighed.
“This was a hard-fought competition, but at the end of the day Oshkosh was superior in technical, it was superior in the production, and it was the No. 2 in cost, and so it was clearly the winning vehicle,” Brogan said. He acknowledged any of the losing bidders could protest Oshkosh’s selection, but said he was confident any protest would not prevail.
The general said he told executives at the prospective M-ATV firms, before Tuesday’s announcement, that they may need to team with each other to ensure the M-ATVs are fielded as soon as possible.
Oshkosh presented a production schedule under which it will build all 5,244 M-ATVs by the end of March, using its main facility in Wisconsin and a subsidiary in Pennsylvania, Brogan said.
“If they are capable to do that, it may not be necessary for them to team with someone else, but we will leave some of that up to them,” he said.
He added Oshkosh’s M-ATV is “very simple to build” because it is put together via an assembly process rather than a manufacturing process, and does not require much welding.
“So we’re pretty confident that they can meet what they put in their proposal,” Brogan said. “And we have that confidence because (for each of the offerors) we visited all of their prime production sites as well as their suppliers and vendors all the way down to the third tier.”
Oshkosh believes it can meet the government’s delivery schedule yet still will talk to other truck builders about possibly assisting its M-ATV effort, Oshkosh Chairman and CEO Robert Bohn said Tuesday in a statement.
The M-ATVs cost roughly $1.4 million each, when looking at an estimated average cost that includes the base vehicle, integration of government-furnished equipment, initial logistics, and transportation to theater, a Marine Corps spokeswoman said.
Oshkosh is slated to deliver the first 10 M-ATVs to the government in July, and Brogan said he expects the company’s production to ramp up to 1,000 vehicles a month in December.
The general said the first M-ATVs could be fielded in Afghanistan in October.
“We think we’re probably going to be pushing it to get to October, but as you know the (Defense) Secretary (Robert Gates) is going to be interested in how fast we can do this,” Brogan said.
Sending the M-ATVs to the war-torn country will be tricky because right now additional U.S. troops and equipment also are entering the country, and “the air bridge into Afghanistan is completely full,” he said.
“So it’s going to be a significant transportation challenge to fit, early on, large numbers of vehicles into what is (an) already full transportation pipeline into that (area) of operations,” Brogan said. The M-ATVs will likely first be flown to theater and then later in the development process shipped by water, he said.
Still, he said outfitting the M-ATVs with government-furnished equipment will be easier that the process was for MRAPs, which are built by multiple manufacturers and have sundry variants and configurations.
The first solicitation documents for the M-ATV emerged last November, after the final orders were placed in the two-year effort to speedily buy more than 16,000 MRAPs for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. M-ATVs are intended to be lighter and more maneuverable off road than MRAPs are.
M-ATVs are replacements for up-armored Humvees, not for MRAPs currently in theater, Brogan said.
Of the initial 16,000-plus MRAPs ordered, Brogan said only 27 have not yet been built. The desired quantity of MRAPs have been fielded to Iraq, so any new vehicles sent there are replacing older copies, he said. MRAPs are still in the process of being sent to Afghanistan, he said.
Brogan said he believes Congress has already provided enough money to cover the production of 5,244 M-ATVs, though additional funds will be needed in fiscal year 2010, which starts Oct. 1, for expenses such as spare parts and field support.