Before the end of the month, the Army plans to launch a competition to replace a portion of its M917 heavy dump truck (HDT) fleet.
Michael Clow, a spokesman for the Army’s combat support and combat service support (CS&CSS) told Defense Daily that a request for proposals for the truck will be published before the end of May. Another source told Defense Daily it could come down within a week.
The program was on hold pending passage of a defense spending bill for fiscal 2017. Granted the requested $3.9 million in that legislation, the program office is moving ahead with issuing the solicitation, Clow said May 16 at the Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association outside Washington, D.C.
The new HDT will replace the F5070, M917 and M917A1 heavy trucks, of which the oldest have been in service for half a century, according to the Army. AM General, which famously built the Humvee, built the current fleet of M917 heavy trucks.
Commercial truck manufacturer Navistar [NAV] will propose a competing design. Mack Truck also is expected to compete in the program, according to industry sources. Another potential competitor is Oshkosh Defense [OSK], which currently builds the Army’s Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) and family of medium tactical vehicles (FMTV).
Contract award is scheduled for March 2018 with first delivery in September of the same year, according to Army budget documents. Target unit cost is listed as $353,000.
The $3.9 million requested in fiscal 2017 will pay for four low-rate initial production trucks and production verification testing. The forecasted budget shrinks to $3 million in fiscal 2018, then ramps up to $10 million for 25 trucks in fiscal 2019. The Army plans to then buy 123 trucks for $30 million in fiscal 2020 and 196 trucks for $60.4 million in 2021.
The HDT Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) build is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of fiscal 2018 followed by product verification testing in fiscal 2019. Concurrent armor development is to begin before LRIP is initiated in fiscal 2018. Armored solution testing will run from mid-fiscal 2020 through fiscal 2021 and production will begin in fiscal 2022, according to Army budget documents.
The M917A3 22.5-ton heavy dump truck is a commercially based system used to load, transport, and dump payloads of sand and gravel aggregates, crushed rock, hot paving mixes, earth, clay, rubble, and large boulders at engineering and construction sites under worldwide climatic conditions in a military environment.