A new Marine Corps notice seeks information on vendors that could potentially provide a remote weapon system for the turreted variant Amphibious Combat Vehicle, or ACV-30.
While Kongsberg has provided its unmanned RT-20 medium caliber turret for the three ACV-30s that BAE Systems
has delivered for testing, the new sources sought notice indicates the Marine Corps may consider looking at a range of weapon systems as it looks to build up to 175 turreted variants.
“[Program Manager, Advanced Amphibious Assault] is seeking to identify interested vendors capable of providing ACV-30 turrets, associated special tooling, associated training, field service representatives for the turret integration, work instructions for turret integration compatible with the ACV-30 [Mission Role Variant, as well as subsequent fielding support,” the Marine Corps writes in the notice published on Friday.
The Marine Corps said information gathered in responses will help “determine if more than one vendor is capable of performing the effort described within this notice.”
BAE Systems announced in early February it had delivered the three ACV-30 production representative test vehicles to the Marine Corps, with the testing set to inform the Marine Corps’ full-rate production decision for the variant (Defense Daily, Feb. 1).
“ACV-30 equips dismounted Marines with direct fire support allowing them to simultaneously find, fix, and engage targets more effectively and efficiently than current systems,” Garrett Lacaillade, vice president of BAE Systems’ amphibious vehicles product line, said in a statement at the time. “Innovating for the future, consistent with Force Design 2030 priorities, we have teamed with our strategic partners Iveco Defence Vehicles, Kongsberg and the Marine Corps to deliver not only an incredibly lethal capability, but a vehicle and weapon system that has the growth potential to incorporate new technologies to defeat future threats.”
The Marine Corps is pursuing a family of vehicles approach for ACV, which includes the base personnel platform and a command and control platform (ACV-C) currently in full-rate production, a recovery variant (ACV-R) going through design and development and the ACV-30 undergoing testing.
BAE Systems was awarded an $88 million deal in August 2022 to build several ACV-30s for testing (Defense Daily, Aug. 16 2022).
Before that award, BAE Systems in May 2020 selected Kongsberg to provide its unmanned RT-20 medium caliber turret for the ACV-30 (Defense Daily, May 13 2020).
An appendix detailing performance and technical specifics for the ACV-30 turret requires special access, but the public notice does state that interested vendors must “ensure turret integration maintains commonality with the existing ACV-30 Hull to the maximum extent possible” and they must “possess an extensive background in the production and fielding support of ground tactical vehicle systems.”
The Marine Corps in March also awarded a pair of contracts to General Dynamics Land Systems [GD] and Textron Systems [TXT] to build 30mm turreted versions of their Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle (ARV-30) prototypes, which will utilize the same Kongsberg unmanned RT-20 medium caliber turret that’s on the ACV-30 test vehicles (Defense Daily, March 8).