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The Army’s top acquisition official for fires said Wednesday his preference is to have multiple solutions in production for new munitions programs, such as the long-range Precision Strike Missile Inc. 4 and the effort to find a second interceptor for the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Inc. 2 defeat system.
Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, program acquisition executive for fires, acknowledged it’s an “aspirational” goal, while citing the model as an opportunity to increase competition and bolster the participation of new defense industry entrants.
“We have to take advantage of the fact that there’s a lot of new market entrants who are being very disruptive in this market space, and I have to be able to offer them a competitive opportunity to compete,” Lozano said during a panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington D.C.
“At the same time, we have to break the old tradition of doing a competition and going down to one vendor, and then going all in on one single vendor, because then we’ve just created a sole source environment, a choke point and a manufacturing constraint,” Lozano added.
When mentioning an interest in having multiple solutions for a program, Lozano noted the Army’s recent selection of five companies to develop PrSM Inc. 4 prototypes.
“And the intent is we want to be able to have multiple different missile and munition solutions for every type of capability requirement we’re trying to develop so, again, we can maintain a hearty, robust industrial defense industrial base while also providing ourselves magazine depth, buying the right mix of munitions from a high-low perspective and then ultimately doing so in an affordable manner, where I can give the maneuver commander optionality,” Lozano said.
The Army late last month awarded deals to Lockheed Martin [LMT], who builds the current version of PrSM, as well as Anduril, Castelion, RTX [RTX] and Mach Industries to work on their Inc. 4 prototypes intended to fire at ranges 1,000 kilometers or more, with plans for a competitive fly-off and downselect in fiscal year 2027 (Defense Daily, Sept. 30).
For the current IFPC Inc. 2 Second Interceptor competition, the Army has selected Lockheed Martin and a team of Boeing [BA] and Anduril to move onto the capability demonstration phase, while for the Army’s Stinger missile replacement program, dubbed Next Generation Short Range Interceptor (NGSRI), Lockheed Martin is currently competing against RTX.
“I would love to have two to four [or] three to five competitive, capable, viable producers of IFPC [Inc. 2] second interceptor missiles. It’s early in that effort. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to achieve that, but that’s the end state that we want to create,” Lozano said.
“We have to be very dynamic and flexible in availing opportunities for industry to compete,” Lozano added.
Lozano, in a panel on Tuesday, confirmed the Army plans to give industry another shot at proposing solutions for both IFPC Inc. 2 Second Interceptor and NGSRI, while both programs are in active competition, with plans to seek additional offerings that can participate in shoot-offs in late fiscal year 2027 (Defense Daily, Oct. 13).
“The thing that really keeps me up at night is I feel like I’m watching a window of opportunity to increase our warfighting capability slowly close on me each and every day, right? So we’re being very aggressive. We’re accepting a lot of risk in the fact that we’re making these opportunities available to industry, and then we’re keeping in mind, ‘Hey, if you can get there, or even if you can get close, we’d be willing to help sustain you into early production and potentially into full rate production,’” Lozano said on Wednesday.
“The bottom line is we need to break the model where we just go to one single material solution against a requirement because there’s a lot of baggage and a lot of evils that come with doing business that way,” Lozano added.
Lozano was also asked Wednesday about the potential for multiple vendors to build the same solution, describing that as more “challenging” than having each provide their own capability.
“Because that relies on me being able to secure the intellectual property that allows me to farm those rights out, right? And, for some these companies, some of that intellectual property are the keys to the kingdom, and [then] I’m neck deep in a fight to ensure we have the right to repair,” Lozano said.
Lozano also alluded to the Army’s new Project Strike initiative to study consolidating budget line items in its munitions portfolio to more flexibly move around funds for promising capabilities.
“So I [would] have multiple different project codes for very similar capability under a program element that I can move money around and buy different capabilities in the year of execution based off of the realities that our Army is facing in any given year,” Lozano said.
