By Ann Roosevelt
The Army plans to hold an industry day April 26 in Sterling Heights, Mich., to discuss the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV).
JLTV is a joint Army-Marine Corps program to replace the existing Humvee fleet of some 170,000. The new vehicle is expected to provide more protection, be more sustainable, mobile and carry more payload. It would come in several variants and trailers.
The industry day will include an update on JLTV requirements, the EMD acquisition strategy, test and evaluation and international program requirements, according to a new TACOM Procurement Network Business Opportunities website that opened this week: http://contracting.tacom.army.mil/majorsys/jltv_emd/jltv_emd.htm.
The website deals with JLTV EMD planning and will be updated as required.
Lockheed Martin [LMT]-BAE Systems; General Tactical Vehicles, a joint venture of General Dynamics [GD] and AM General, and BAE-Navistar International Corp. [NAVZ] all won Technology Development contracts.
In September 2009, the three JLTV teams’ contracts were modified to accommodate an Australian JLTV effort. The modification included such things as right-handed operation, trailers and testing.
A notional JLTV EMD and demonstration strategy has been posted and will be updated. So far, the strategy would include a full and open competition to award two contracts of the cost or fixed price type. It would include developmental test, limited user test and limited live fire. The phase would potentially run from mid-fiscal year 2011 to mid-FY 2013.
That would be followed by a competition restricted to the EMD contractors only, and one contractor would be selected for the production phase. A fixed price contract would be developed for limited and full-rate production and run from mid FY ’13 through FY ’16.
The request for proposals is expected to be released in April 2011, with an award planned for September 2011.