Page 6 – Defense Daily

Airbus Details Second ALC Program Demo, L3Harris Providing Unmanned Lakota’s ‘Digital Backbone’

Airbus U.S. said Tuesday it recently completed a second demo to inform its work on the Marine Corps’ Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC) program, which follows a recent announcement it’s working with L3Harris Technologies

[LHX] on the effort to develop an unmanned version of the UH-72 Lakota aircraft.

L3Harris will serve as the lead systems integrator on Airbus’ team for ALC, which is offering the uncrewed MQ-72C for the program to develop an unmanned cargo-carrying platform.

Rendering of Airbus’ MQ-72C, its offering for the Marine Corps’ Aerial Logistics Connector program. Photo: Airbus.

“I’m really excited about this partnership because it brings the best in class from the airframe side, [in terms] of manufacturing and supporting and sustaining rotorcraft, and best in breed from a systems engineering, systems integration, digital backbone and [modular open systems architecture perspective],” Rob Geckle, chairman and CEO of Airbus U.S., said last week during a briefing at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference in Nashville.

The Marine Corps last April selected Airbus for the competitive ALC development effort, with an aim to have a prototype that’s ready to transition into fielding within five years (Defense Daily, May 14 2024).

Airbus has said MQ-72C, the unmanned version of its UH-72 helicopter being developed for ALC, is intended to have a cruise speed of 135 knots, a maximum takeoff weight of over 8.300 pounds and a range above 350 nautical miles.

“[The MQ-72C] is a low-risk, affordable solution. And we think that’s hitting the sweet spot when you have demanding mission requirements and resource constraints,” Geckle told reporters, noting Airbus has invested $20 million into developing the MQ-72C.

Geckle said Airbus is targeting production of a minimum viable MQ-72C prototype in the 2028 timeframe and then moving toward production of a final design in 2029.

“We plan on being ready for [low-rate initial production], if that’s what NAVAIR wants to do, by 2030,” Geckle said.

The Marine Corps also selected a team led by Near Earth Autonomy, that also includes Honeywell [HON] and Leonardo Helicopters, for the ALC development effort (Defense Daily, Oct. 28 2024).

Airbus said the second program demo for ALC was conducted at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma and evaluating the performance characteristics of the UH-72 Lakota, validating “the aircraft’s ability to load and carry specialized cargo” and detailing how the platform can be modified to meet requirements for an uncrewed cargo-carrying capability.

“This demonstration was another illustration of how our MQ-72C system can support a range of missions and payloads that Marines will need to perform operations in austere environments,” Geckle said in a statement on Tuesday. “We believe this aircraft will redefine the future of Marine Corps aviation.”

Geckle said last week feedback from the Marine Corps and Naval Air Systems Command is being incorporated into continued development work on the MQ-72C.

L3Harris’ work on the Airbus’ ALC team will include providing a modular open systems architecture (MOSA) for the MQ-72C to serve as the future platform’s “digital backbone.”

“Combined with their modular open systems approach, the infrastructure enables the U.S. Marines to rapidly integrate third-party, commercial off-the-shelf hardware that will enable maximum system versatility and mission adaptability,” Airbus said in a statement last week.

Jason Lambert, L3Harris’ president of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told reporters the company has invested $24 million of its own research and development dollars into building out the MOSA capability, noting it’s already been fielded as part of its work on the Army’s ATHENA-R interim ISR jet capability.

“So the best thing about this is there’s not the development risk that comes with a traditional DoD program of record,” Lambert said.

In late April, Airbus announced it had partnered with Shield AI to integrate its autonomy software for the MQ-72C, citing the firm’s “record of succeeding quickly” in integrating autonomous capabilities as a key factor in the decision to work together on the ALC program (Defense Daily, April 30).

“And with Shield AI as our autonomy partner, this reminds me of the 1992 Dream Team back in the Olympics,” Geckle told reporters. “[DoD] wants autonomous solutions. They want something to support missions [for] distributed logistics in contests and semi-contested environments. They want it to be affordable. And they want it to be a platform that can meet the schedule. If you’re using readily available capabilities on the systems integration and MOSA side with aircraft that are readily available with a hot production line, that just helps you on the cost and on schedule.”

Airbus said additional ALC demos are planned for 2025 to “inform future acquisition decisions for the opportunity to build a prototype aircraft.”

“The demos that we’ve done have proven out the capabilities of the airframe itself. And we expect that, in the future, will start proving out the capability and autonomy solutions based on the Marine Corps’ mission requirements,” Geckle said.

Geckle noted Airbus views the MQ-72C as “having utility” beyond the Marine Corps, and the company has “engaged” with the Army’s UAS program office and Contested Logistics Cross-Functional Team to gauge potential interest in the platform.

U.S. Space Force to Field CCS Meadowlands

The U.S. Space Force Counter Communications System (CCS) 10.3 Meadowlands received fielding approval on May 2 after Space Force accepted delivery of the first two systems from builder L3Harris Technologies [LHX] on April 8, and Space Force tested Meadowlands between Apr. 14 and May 2, Space Operations Command said on Monday.

“This significant upgrade is a lighter-weight and more compact version of the CCS 10.2 that provides remote capability, automation, transportability, reduced footprint, and multi-system management,” the command said. “Utilizing a more open architecture software system, CCS Meadowlands will simplify software updates to ensure the nation’s warfighters can keep pace with evolving threats and missions while also allowing one operator to control 300 percent more simultaneous missions from a geographically remote operating location.”

Space Force has discussed three non-kinetic space control/counterspace systems–the CCS ground jammer introduced in 2004 and its 10.2 and 10.3 Meadowlands upgrades; Alabama-based COLSA Corp.’s Bounty Hunter system, a ground-based satellite communications interference detection system, which achieved initial operational capability on Aug. 7, 2020; and the Space Rapid Capabilities Office’s Remote Modular Terminal (RMT) ground-based jammer by Virginia’s Northstrat, CACI International [CACI]; and Colorado-based Seed Innovations, LLC.

Space Force has said that Meadowlands’ predecessor, CCS Block 10.2, achieved IOC on March 9, 2020 as Space Force’s first space control system.

A year ago, then Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall lamented that the Department of the Air Force had scrimped on fiscal 2025 funding for counterspace to deter China because of constraints in the Budget Control Act.

The May 2 fielding approval of Meadowlands “enables crews to enter the Deliberate Readiness Development phase whereby Guardians will train and certify on the upgraded capability,” Space Operations Command said on Monday. “Next steps include upgrading the operating system to fulfill remote operations capabilities and multi-system management in the near future.”

Air Force plans have called for the buy of 30 Meadowlands systems, the first four of which L3Harris was to deliver by April 2023 (Defense Daily, May 3, 2021).

NGA Close To Operational Use Of New GEOINT Tasking Tool For Combatant Commands

ST. LOUIS—A new version of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) primary tool for ordering imagery should be ready for operational use later this year, an agency official said.

The tailored version of the GEOINT Information Management Services (GIMS) tool developed to operate in contested communications environments is being exercised with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command now and, if all goes well, the SlimGIMS will be ready for wider adoption, the official told Defense Daily on Tuesday at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium.

GIMS is a long-time tasking tool developed and maintained by

Lockheed Martin [LMT]. The tool allows analysts, warfighters and others to acquire older imagery or task for new imagery depending on the needs. That imagery can come from National Reconnaissance Office and commercial assets.

In a benign environment, combatant commands would work through NGA’s GIMs but in a denied, degraded, intermittent, and low-bandwidth (DDIL) environment, SlimGIMS will provide alternative, although “less than ideal” pathways to task GIMS, the official said.

The SlimGIMS effort began last summer and underwent testing five months later in late 2024. The initial test was not done in a contested environment but a second test in early 2025 was conducted in DDIL conditions and was successful. It has gotten “rave reviews,” the official said.

The Kubernetes-based technology is deployed on NGA’s Joint Regional Edge Nodes (J-REN) at four locations, including Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Forces Korea. There is also a J-REN test node in the U.S. The SlimGIMS effort was first reported by Breaking Defense.

NGA’s source directorate is “very focused” on speed of delivery, a requirement for all of the combatant commands, Tracey Maloney, deputy director of source operations at NGA, said on Monday during a panel discussion here.

“We are practicing the way we want to operate in the future,” Maloney said. “We are practicing with new tools…We plan for that to operate in a DDIL environment within a command, and we are practicing with this tool as we speak with the commands in the various exercises that have already happened. So, this isn’t something that we’re just planning for in the future. This is something we’re doing right now, and we’re getting feedback on this tool, and this tool is being used in the components and at the command level.”

NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth in a keynote on Wednesday said that in two exercises last year SimGIMS demonstrated it could meet “combatant command requirements to task satellites in theater with a simplified user interface” and reduce the time to create a collection request from 60 minutes down to five.

GIMS also allows users to specify the quality of the imagery they want, such as the angle of capture and a specific area of an item of interest.

NGA last week said it awarded Lockheed Martin a new contract potentially worth $615.7 million to continue sustaining GIMS and to support modernization of the program in what it calls the Geospatial Intelligence Collection Next program (Defense Daily, May 16).

“With an intuitive user interface that requires minimal training, SlimGIMS allows both novice and experienced users to quickly and intuitively request products from the full range of GEOINT collection capabilities and services available in GIMS,” Penelope Tarpley, vice president of space operations and analytics for Lockheed Martin’s Space segment, said in a statement to Defense Daily.

Allvin: F-47 Development ‘Can Come at the Speed of Software, not Hardware’

The U.S. Air Force has more control over the development of the Boeing [BA] F-47 fighter than the service has had for the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 Lightning II, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin said on Tuesday.

“The primary difference is that we have more control of the project as it moves forward,” Allvin said at a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing on the Department of the Air Force budget after SASC Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) asked him how the acquisition approach for the F-47 fighter will affect the U.S. taxpayer, military forces, and national security.

“We have in-sourced more,” Allvin testified. “We have more ownership of the tech base. We have guided a government reference architecture so we own the mission systems, and so others can come in and play, but we own the development, the upgrade, and so the upgrades can come at the speed of software, not hardware, [and] can come at the speed of our engineers understanding how fast to advance versus dealing with the contractor and paying the extra cost.”

In March, the Air Force chose Boeing over Lockheed Martin for the stealthy F-47, which may result in an addition of up to 3,000 workers at Boeing’s St. Louis sites, which now employ about 17,000 (Defense Daily, March 21). The F-47 award was important for Boeing St. Louis, as there were discussions about a possible loss of 2,000 workers there, if the company lost the competition.

“I think we’re gonna have some conversations about F-35 and how we don’t want to repeat that,” Allvin testified on Tuesday. “It is going to affect the taxpayer. My sense is that we’re gonna be able to be more agile, and, as more disruptive technology comes into play, to be able to develop more advanced systems, we’ll be able to more rapidly integrate them, not only into the F-47, but into those two Collaborative Combat Aircraft–the YFQ-42 and YFQ-44–that are under prototype. They’re all gonna be under the same mission systems architecture so we won’t be upgrading just one platform. We’ll be upgrading a system so the American taxpayer will get more combat capability out of their money.”

The Air Force is also examining systems’ cost savings across the service via paying contractors for technical data; receiving authorization to build 3D-printed parts; and conducting in-house maintenance, rather than relying on contractors. Such ideas are part of a Service Member Right to Repair bill introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) last December.

At the SASC hearing on Tuesday, Warren said that Tinker AFB, Okla., was able to build a replacement pressure door handle for the C-5 Galaxy transport by Lockheed Martin and save 95 percent of costs because the Air Force was “not tripped up by contractor restrictions.”

Asked by Warren whether “this type of major cost savings makes ‘right to repair’ a strategic priority for the Air Force and for its budget,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink assented.

“That’s something I’ve already had discussions with the team on in the first couple of days,” he said. “Not only from a cost perspective, but from a readiness perspective…both are affected with our ability to have more flexibility in how we do parts sustainment.”

Meink took office last Friday.

USAF, Anduril, General Atomics Market CCA

While U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin posted on X on May 1 that the two Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) prototypes–Anduril Industries‘ YFQ-44A Fury and General Atomics‘ YFQ-42A Gambit–had begun ground testing, Anduril has not released a date on which such testing began–only that it started by May 1, and General Atomics, for its part, said that the YFQ-42A had not begun ground testing until May 7.

“THE WORLD’s FIRST LOOK AT OUR NEW YFQ-42A!” Allvin posted on X on Monday with a General Atomics’ photo of the YFQ-42A. “As the @DeptofDefense matches threats to capabilities under @SecDef’s leadership, Collaborative Combat Aircraft will prove not only cost-effective, but truly lethal. No doubts these uncrewed fighters will put our adversaries on notice!”

In response to a written question on Tuesday on what led Allvin to say on May 1 that ground testing had begun for both prototypes’ propulsion, avionics, autonomy and ground control systems, the Air Force said that the May 1 Allvin statement was meant to convey that CCA ground testing had “generally begun.”

On the ground testing start date, General Atomics has been more transparent. Not so on its engine design. Anduril’s Fury is to use the Williams International FJ44, while General Atomics has declined to say which company will provide Gambit’s commercial turbofan engine (Defense Daily, March 5).

Beale AFB, Calif.–the home of the U-2 surveillance plane–is to house the Aircraft Readiness Unit for CCAs to allow them to deploy quickly.

In April last year, the Air Force narrowed the CCA Increment 1 field to General Atomics and Anduril. While the service had said it planned to conduct flight tests this summer, now the service has revised that timing to this year.

Yet, General Atomics said on Monday that it still plans to begin YFQ-42A flight tests this summer, and Allvin said at a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) forum on Monday that such flight tests would begin “this summer or late summer.”

“The YFQ-42A is an exciting next step for our company,” David Alexander, president of General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems, Inc., said in a statement Monday. “It reflects many years of partnership with the U.S. Air Force of advancing unmanned combat aviation for the United States and its allies around the world, and we’re excited to begin ground testing and move to first flight.”

The Air Force has said that it plans on an Increment 1 downselect in fiscal 2026 and the start of Increment 2 development that year.

The range of the U.S. Air Force’s prototype CCAs are to be at least 700 nautical miles–greater than the 590 nautical mile range of the Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and the 670 nautical mile range of the service’s F-35A Lightning II, also by Lockheed Martin.

During the Biden administration, former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall established a planning goal of 1,000 CCAs. Allvin’s graphic in his May 1 X posting lists “1,000 plus” as the CCA planning number, while listing CCA speed as “classified” and “stealth” as another desired attribute.

“The CCA program’s ambitions of fielding over 1,000 aircraft on a relatively short timeline will surely stress the industrial base, contracting arrangements, and related aspects of the acquisition enterprise,” according to a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments report on CCA. “According to some industry experts, establishing the necessary supply chain will require the Air Force to make significant investments, including tapping the commercial market and nontraditional defense firms to buy jet engines, additive manufacturing, thermoplastics, and other inputs.”

A congressional DoD reconciliation bill has $678 million to accelerate CCA (Defense Daily, Apr. 28).

The Air Force has requested funds for CCA under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) component development and prototypes’ program element, which has also included the manned NGAD fighter. In March, the Trump administration said that Boeing [BA]’s design beat Lockheed Martin’s and that Boeing will build the F-47 sixth generation stealth fighter.

Allvin said at the CFR forum on Monday that Congress can most aid the Air Force in procurement process fixes by giving the service funding flexibility and increasing the $15 million floor for required congressional defense committee leaders’ approval of Air Force-desired reprogramming.

In March last year, the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform advised Congress to increase the floor to $25 million for research and development line items, $40 million for procurement, $30
million for operations and maintenance, and $15 million for military personnel.

Both CCA prototypes “are moving so fast,” Allvin said at the CFR forum. “They’ve cleared all their milestones. They’ve burned through the money so they can go faster. We had a harder time than we should have to be able to get more money into that because it wasn’t in the right bucket. Well-performing gets punished and gets slowed down. So [the Air Force needs] more funding flexibility, plus the above threshold re-programming. Below $15 million is ridiculous. We need more on that.”

CBP Upgrading Mobile Surveillance Systems With Radar From SRC To Improve Border Security

Benchmark Electronics [BHE] is upgrading its Mobile Video Surveillance Systems [MVSS] with a radar provided by SRC to increase range and add autonomy for border security operations.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is funding the upgrades of the currently deployed MVSS under its Surveillance Systems program for use in high-risk border regions.

SRC on Tuesday said its SR Hawk ground surveillance radar is already being integrated into the MVSS, extending surveillance to nearly eight miles for persistent, real-time, 360-degree wide area coverage. Once a potential threat is detected, data is automatically sent to a command station for review.

CBP in 2015 awarded Tactical Micro, now part of Benchmark Electronics, the contract for the MVSS, which include an integrated suite of sensor equipment mounted on a mast in the bed of a light duty pickup truck. The addition of the radar to the MVSS-R, enables automatic detection and tracking of moving ground vehicles, individuals, and maritime vessels in the littorals, SRC said.

Initially, Benchmark is upgrading 30 of its systems to the MVSS-R configuration to achieve full operational capability by August 2025. There are 167 MVSS fielded.

First Production Unit of B61-13 Gravity Bomb Complete, Pantex Says

The first production unit of the B61-13 gravity bomb is complete, nearly a year ahead of schedule, Pantex Plant prime PanTeXas Deterrence said Monday.

The first production unit was completed four months after the announcement of the last production unit for the B61-12. Pantex Program Manager Taylor Massey said in a press release Monday that the team leveraged attributes of the B61-12 to accelerate B61-13 design, authorization and testing within a year.

In April, a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) spokesperson made similar comments, and in a recent hearing Acting NNSA Administrator Teresa Robbins attributed the accelerated delivery to an “existing production line.”

“The remarkable speed of the B61-13’s production is a testament to the ingenuity of our scientists and engineers and the urgency we face to fortify deterrence in a volatile new age,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in remarks Monday at the Pantex Plant. “It was my honor today to stamp the first completed unit at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, where all the efforts of NNSA’s labs, plants, and sites culminated in this amazing milestone.”

According to the 2025 Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan (SSMP), which NNSA released in October, the B61-13’s first production unit was originally planned for fiscal 2026. The SSMP also projected the B61-13 will finish production in fiscal year 2028, but the Pantex press release said completion is now expected by fiscal 2027.

The B61 family of bombs is currently deployed from the U.S. Air Force and NATO bases, NNSA said. The gravity bomb itself is the oldest in the U.S. arsenal, with over 50 years of service, and the B61-13 is one of seven warhead modernization programs executed by NNSA.

Kilby, Strategic Systems Lead Weigh ‘Alternatives’ For SLCM-N

Adm. James Kilby, acting Chief of Naval Operations, said last week that he was in talks with the director of Strategic Systems Programs on nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) alternatives.

“I’ve had a couple of sessions with Vice Adm. Johnny Wolf, who is the strategic programs office lead, who will produce this,” Kilby said in a May 15 oversight hearing on the Marine Corps and Navy with the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. “He’s on target for a new production by 2035 but to your point, he’s looked at some alternatives, and we haven’t totally briefed the Secretary on those yet, but he’s looking at speed and an urgency to get something out sooner.”

Kilby responded to a question by Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), a member of the subcommittee whose district abuts the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Y-12 National Security Complex. He asked how the Navy is ensuring the SLCM-N program does not “stall in development purgatory for years when we need a capability as soon as possible.”

“I’m a strong proponent of the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile program,” Fleischmann said. “Recognizing, Sir, that we are limited on our launch tubes afloat, it is only necessary to have a small number of tactical nuclear weapons to significantly complicate our adversary’s decision calculus. I think given this dangerous capability gap, the emphasis should be on speed.”

“We do not need to reinvent the wheel when we’re talking about a capability we recently had in service only 15 years ago,” Fleischmann added,

The fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act directed the Navy and the NNSA to deploy SLCM-N by 2034. The W80-4 warhead, while facing some delays in 2022, is currently on schedule, a senior official at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told sister publication The Exchange Monitor in December. Even so, this past summer then-NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said the agency was also looking at other possible warhead fits if delays persist.

SRC Details New R1430/1440 And R1540 Multi-Mission Radars

SRC Inc. on Tuesday detailed the expansion of its Gryphon family of multi-mission radars with the new R1430/R1440 and R1540 systems, noting the latter has been “extensively deployed with the U.S. military.”

An SRC spokesperson told Defense Daily

its assessing “numerous opportunities” for the upgraded three-panel R1430 and four-panel R1440 lightweight radars and already has “numerous customers” for the extended range R1540 system which has been “deployed internationally.”

Gryphon R1540 multi-mission radar. Photo: SRC

“Building on the success of the field-proven R1410 radar, these new radar systems deliver powerful, mobile, and precise capabilities to meet the growing threat of unmanned aircraft systems across complex operational environments,” SRC said in a statement.

SRC describes its Gryphon family of radars as “lightweight, low-cost, air-cooled 3-D active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars capable of detecting hundreds of moving targets at any moment across heavily congested long distances.”

“These systems provide counter-UAS and fire control capabilities to accurately defend against modern threats,” SRC said.

The upgraded R1430 and R1440 offer “persistent 360-degree coverage” and “faster update rates and enhanced target tracking in a compact configuration designed for on-the-move or fixed-site deployment,” according to SRC.

The extended range R1540 offers “higher accuracy and precision fire control in a smaller solution than typical radars in its class,” according to SRC.

“While counter-UAS is a primary application, these new radars also provide precision tracking of various aircraft, vehicles, personnel, and rocket, artillery and mortar threats,” SRC said. “They are multi-mission capable, supporting SHORAD, base defense, force protection, and coastal and border security, while operating seamlessly on-the-move or at fixed locations.”

Development of the R1540 radar began in 2020 and has been in full-rate production since last year, according to the SRC spokesperson, while noting the company is unable to name specific customers at this time.

“We are pursuing multiple opportunities for these radars, but we are unable to name them at this time,” the spokesperson told Defense Daily.

Mack Defense Nabs Marine Corps Deal To Build Medium Tactical Truck Prototypes

The Marine Corps has awarded Mack Defense a deal to build two prototypes for its Medium Tactical Truck (MTT) program, which will inform a potential replacement for its Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) fleet.

The new award continues Mack Defense’s work on the MTT program along with ND Defense, which received its deal to build two prototypes in January.

Mack Defense Awarded Contract by U.S. Marine Corps to Develop Medium Tactical Truck (MTT). Photo: Mack Defense.

“These prototypes represent the next generation of purpose-built, specialty vehicles for the Marine Corps,” David Hartzell, president of Mack Defense, said in a statement on Monday. “By leveraging our commercial vehicle technology expertise and adapting it for military applications, we’re delivering a highly capable platform that can perform in the most challenging terrains, while incorporating advanced safety features and hybrid propulsion systems that meet the Marine Corps’ rigorous mission requirements.”

Mack Defense’s delivery of its two prototypes, which include a a 4×4 configuration with a 10-foot cargo bed and a 6×6 configuration with a 20-foot cargo bed, is expected around fall 2026, a company spokesperson confirmed to Defense Daily.

The Marine Corps in February 2024 announced it had selected Mack Defense and ND Defense for the MTT effort, with Phase 1 of the prototype program focused on design and development work (Defense Daily, Feb. 2 2024).

MTT is intended to inform a potential replacement for the Marine Corp’s MTVR fleet, built by Oshkosh Defense [OSK], to include the cargo, dump, wrecker, tractor and resupply variants.

The new $10.8 million contract modification to Mack Defense for Phase 2 of MTT was officially awarded on May 8, and brings the total value of the company’s Other Transaction Agreement for the program to $16 million.

ND Defense received its $17.2 million contract modification for Phase 2 on Jan. 17, which brought the total value of its work on MTT to $24.1 million.

Mack Defense said construction of its two prototypes is expected to be completed by early fall and it will then conduct its own testing on the vehicles at the Nevada Automotive Test Center (NATC) in the first half of 2026 before delivering them to the Marine Corps.

“The MTT prototypes incorporate significant technological advancements in driver safety and operational capability. These include advanced driver assistance features such as collision avoidance, blind-spot detection and vehicle dynamic control systems incorporating enhanced traction control and anti-lock brakes,” Mack Defense said in a statement.

Mack Defense noted the vehicles are integrated with hybrid-electric technology “delivering improved fuel efficiency while enabling critical tactical advantages such as silent watch capabilities using extensive onboard power storage and generation and exportable power for other military systems.”

Hartzell told Defense Daily in a February interview that NATC is also building a tech demonstrator to inform the Marine Corps’ plan for a potential MTVR replacement.

The Marine Corps has said that key requirements for MTT include integration of hybrid-electric technologies, on-board power generation, mobility capability for a 70 percent off-road and 30 percent on-road mission profile and a modular and scalable armor system.