By Ann Roosevelt
Oshkosh Corp.’s [OSK] Defense unit continues to work through plans to prepare for a contract with the government, a multi-year multi- billion rebuy contract for the Army’s Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) now under protest by losing bidders before the GovernmentAccountability Office (GAO).
“We can take prudent steps to execute pre-contract work, though the government is not obliged to cover any of our costs,” Andy Hove, Oshkosh Corporation executive vice president and president, Defense, told Defense Daily at the Association of the United States Army annual conference Wednesday.
“Internally, we take the steps we normally take” with pending contracts, he said, such as discussing work with suppliers, and locking in place final production plans.
In August, Oshkosh won the FMTV rebuy competition over current FMTV producer BAE Systems and Navistar (Defense Daily, Aug. 28). Both defeated bidders then filed protests with GAO, which must respond by Dec. 14 (Defense Daily, Sept. 11,17).
The requirements contract, now under protest, had a first delivery order valued at $280.9 million for the production and delivery of 2,568 trucks and trailers.
Initial test vehicle deliveries were planned for mid-2010, followed by production vehicle deliveries later in the year. According to the contract award, the first ordering year runs from the date of the award to Dec. 31.
The FMTV rebuy program is for the production of as many as 23,000 vehicles and trailers, support services and engineering. FMTV consists of up to 23 variants and 17 different models.
Hove pointed out the protest is against the government, and the government’s source selection team. “We’re confident that was a professional assessment,” he said.
Documents were laid out in February, follow-up documents, explanations, questions and answers were all posted on a government website in an “open and transparent” publically available fashion, he said.
Hove said those who question the company’s production ability are unfair. “Oshkosh is a great company–we have been building military trucks and a whole range of specialty vehicles since our founding in 1917 and we manage a wide range of military truck programs.”
Oshkosh Defense produces Army heavy trucks and the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) All Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV), as well as all the Marines’ medium and heavy trucks.
The Army M-ATV is already being delivered to Afghanistan, three months after the initial contract award on June 30. “We’ve exceeded deliveries in all three months of the contract. We continue to stay ahead of schedule,” Hove said. Some 200 have been delivered to date, while deliveries of those on contract will be completed by February. The government has indicated that additional quantities might be ordered–about 1,000, for a total of 5,244 vehicles.
The FMTV build will require a an armored cab that complies with the Army’s Long Term Armor Strategy (LTAS), a design that will be able to accommodate added capability moving forward.
Oshkosh produces armored cabs for all its armored vehicles, and has a core competency in the principles and fundamentals, he said. Armor is “in a state of evolution, materials become more efficient, lighter–it’s never a static process,” he said.
“We manage all of that production across a wide range of programs, day in and day out, and we have a tremendous track record of on-time delivery to the cost,” Hove said.
Essentially, “I don’t think it’s a tremendous stretch,” for Oshkosh to take a government-owned technical package and build to those specifications, because the company has specific military truck production experience in that weight class, he said.
“In the context of what we do in all the programs we manage, this is not an unusual challenge,” Hove said.