YORK, Pa. – The first completed Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV) rolled off BAE Systems production line on Dec. 15 and both the company and Army officials are prepared to begin churning them out as soon as resources become available.
In the absence of a war in which the M113 replacements are needed on an emergency basis, Maj. Gen. David Bassett, program executive officer for ground combat systems, prefers to continue the deliberate, methodical schedule the program has enjoyed since BAE was awarded and engineering and manufacturing development contract two years ago.
“If the balloon went up – and we’re challenged by our chief every day to be ready to fight tomorrow – I could safely turn to Army leadership and say ‘Build it now. We’ve built one. We can build more. Get it in the hands of our soldiers,’” Bassett said during a rollout ceremony for the first general-purpose AMPV at BAE’s manufacturing facility here. “In that emergency, this program has reached a milestone that would make that possible…We’ve got the capacity to go faster, but we’ve got to make sure we got the first one right before we ramp up production.”
The program currently is set up to produce 160 vehicles a year, which translates to outfitting a brigade combat team per year until all 3,000 or so vehicles are fielded. Internal Army studies suggest that equipping two brigades per year instead of just one could save “literally billions of dollars,” Bassett said.
“The Army has been looking at options to accelerate low-rate production to meet requirements in Europe,” Bassett said. “We’re trying to position it so that if resources were made available and the decision were made, we would be ready tomorrow.”
BAE has invested in production capacity surplus in anticipation that more resources might come its way, said Erwin Beiber, BAE president of platforms and systems.
BAE is on the hook for 29 vehicles for the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the program. The Army plans to buy more than 3,000 AMPVs to replace the pre-Vietnam-era M113 armored personnel carriers in units at and below brigade echelon. Armored brigade combat teams (ABCTs) currently use the M113 that was introduced in 1960.
AMPV comes in five variants: general purpose, mortar carrier, mission command, medical treatment and medical evacuation. The one unveiled Dec. 15 is the first general purpose variant and one each of the other four variants is on the production line.
“One of the things we’re doing here in York and across the facilities supporting this is making major investments in supporting our people, our test capability, our production capability and our support capability, to ensure that as we get close to initial rate production and full rate production we’ll be able to support the demand for AMPV and the programs” in the armored brigade combat teams, Bieber said.
While ramping up production is feasible, it is not necessarily recommended. The program has deliberately planned for an infusion of funding, but the time to push the throttle, outside of an emergency, is once the vehicle clear EMD and are in low-rate production, Bassett said.
“This is not the finish line,” Bassett said. “The last thing we want to do is celebrate too soon … because there are still things that can bring this program down and we’re not going to rest.”
“We are always looking for opportunities to modernize our force faster if resources are available,” Bassett said. “With a program like this, the question is when is the vehicle designed enough to turn on that production and I think that is a measure of risk.”
Even at present the program has enjoyed success mainly because it has not overgrown its budget by being too ambitious in either requirements or schedule, said Col. Michael Milner, the Army’s AMPV project manager. The first AMPV rolled off the line just under two years from the contract award to BAE and six months from the critical design review.
“There are so few programs today that have delivered prototypes this quickly so we can get into test and eventually get into production,” Milner said. “We were able to make requirements adjustments that allowed the program to maintain a strong balance of performance, cost and schedule and set the program up for success as we move forward.”
Adherence to the initial schedule was possible partially because Army leadership was able to temper its appetite for an exquisite design that satisfied all their perceived needs.
“We allowed adjustments not to the things that protect soldiers, but to the things, say that might disable the automotive system, some specific, very narrow areas where there may be a classified vulnerability,” Bassett said. “Rather than trying to redesign the vehicle around a narrow shortcoming, we said we would accept that as long as it doesn’t put soldiers at risk.”
“We have not allowed a perfect vehicle, to become the enemy of a very much better vehicle to deliver to our soldiers,” Bassett added.
Some of the program’s success Bassett attributed to the direct attention of Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, “who took a personal role in shaping the requirements and acquisition tradeoffs necessary to keep this program moving forward and delivering capabilities our soldiers deserve.”
“His personal involvement has prevented this program from falling into the traps that have caught other programs and caused them not to succeed,” Bassett said of Milley. “He has ensured that we’ve stayed aligned with his priorities to deliver the appropriate combination of protection, mobility, reliability, by making adjustments in the areas of requirements that we needed to keep this program on budget and on schedule.”
Between now and June, BAE will conduct internal shakedown testing before delivering the 29 EMD vehicles to the Army. The Army will also collect early reliability data on the vehicles as they are put through their paces on the test track. That data can be extrapolated to the Bradley engineering change proposal (ECP) 2 program, which is common in automotive structure. Paladin Integrated Management (PIM) shares automotive components with both vehicles.
The base program calls for two years between now and low-rate production, which include six months of contractor shakedown, a year of government testing and then limited user testing prior to LRIP. Initial operational test and evaluation, which will measure its suitability for combat, is scheduled for 2019.
“We’re going to take a hard look at that testing and Bradley ECP2 testing to see if we can’t pull the schedule in even a little more,” Bassett said.