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General Dynamics Land Systems [GD] plans to have delivered all eight XM30 combat vehicle prototypes to the Army by the end of November, as it tracks a downselect decision for the Bradley replacement in spring 2027.
Geoff Norman, the company’s director of strategy, told Defense Daily the timeline to select a winner for XM30 is a “little bit of an acceleration,” with the Army having previously pointed to late 2027 as a target date to decide between moving forward with GD Land Systems or American Rheinmetall.
“We’re tracking that that decision in the spring of ‘27 was accelerated, moved to the left a little bit from maybe the original acquisition plan that had been laid out a couple years ago,” Norman said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.
The Army in June 2023 selected GD Land Systems and American Rheinmetall to move onto the detailed design and prototype build phases for XM30 and awarded the two firms $1.6 billion in contracts, a major step in the latest effort to build a Bradley replacement after scrapping the previous Optionally Manned Fight Vehicle initiative (Defense Daily, June 26, 2023).
“XM30 remains a top modernization priority, and getting this capability into operational units as quickly as possible is important. And it brings to the Army a whole new baseline of capabilities, plus the ability to upgrade in a way that’s never been done before with this open architecture and growth margins built into the baseline design. So I think the Army is really excited about what they’ve seen from the vendors so far, and is prioritizing this as one of the top modernization activities,” Norman said.
Both companies recently confirmed they had delivered initial prototypes to the Army, with GD Land Systems offering a platform dubbed Wolf and American Rheinmetall working with a version of its Lynx vehicle (Defense Daily, Sept. 2).
Norman confirmed that GD Land Systems has now delivered three XM30 prototypes to Fort Hood in Texas, along with providing a full-up prototype, ballistic hull and turret to the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and also completing a prototype to be used for software integration work.
“The vehicles that we produced are actually in the government’s hands now, in test, and so I think that the Army is very focused on getting that test activity done,” Norman said.
“So when it’s all said and done, the Army is going to have eight XM30s from us and eight from Rheinmetall to use for different testing purposes,” Norman added. “We remain in lockstep with the Army as they continue to refine their test approach. They’re doing some really innovative things with XM30 that may be different than traditional, historical acquisition activities. So, one of the things that’s being done is they’re seeking to get these prototype vehicles in soldiers’ hands earlier than is normally the case. And so, the Army test community has really been leaning forward to get the safety releases that are necessary, so those soldiers can operate in the vehicles safely. So one of the first priorities has been the safety testing with Army Test Evaluation Command out at Aberdeen.”
Norman said he anticipated the Army will give the “green light” for soldiers to begin operating the prototypes sometime late November to December, with that evaluation effort set to help inform the eventual downselect decision.
“We think soldiers are going to be operating on these vehicles in tactical scenarios where they’re doing force-on-force evaluations. And then they’ll also go out on the live fire range and do lethality testing where they can evaluate the fire control systems, the design of the vehicles and provide the government feedback as to which vehicle they prefer,” Norman said.
GD Land Systems will have a one-eighth-scale model of their XM30 offering at this week’s AUSA conference, Norman noted.
“[You’ll] see the vehicle hull, the turret and [you’ll] see interior components of the vehicle, specifically the crew station and the squad area,” Norman said.
