HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program may have been delayed nearly 100 days by a stubborn bid protest, but Army officials still are hailing it as a model acquisition effort that could be applied to future platforms.
The joint program office now estimates it will shave 10 percent to 15 percent off the total JLTV program cost, Scott Davis, program executive officer for Army combat support and combat services support (CS&CSS), told reporters March 15.
All savings will be rolled back into the program to speed production and delivery so that fielding will be complete in the mid-2030s instead of the early 2040s, he said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2016 Global Force Expo here. Davis said officials including Pentagon chief weapons buyer Frank Kendall have praised he program as a thorough competition that met identified requirements within its budget.
“That program, I think, is really being held as a model not only inside the Army but on several occasions, Mr. Kendall has asked us to talk about how we implemented the strategy through EMD and really drove some vendor behaviors based on the way we did source selection.”
the contract awarded to Oshkosh for the first 17,000 vehicles is worth about $6.7 billion. The total program, which calls for 49,099 JLTVs for the Army and 5,500 for the Marine Corps will cost much more.
Photo: Oshkosh Defense
The most recent Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) from December of 2014 showed a planned cost in base-Year fiscal 2012 dollars of $22.5 billion, so the Army stands to save between $2.25 and $3.3 billion over the life of the program.
“We’ll be able to apply that to the program and build them that much faster,” Davis added. “It ends up saving a net of about five years.”
Stable requirements seeking mature automotive and tactical-vehicle technologies and a thorough competition between a worthy field of experience manufacturers “converged to give us that kind of benefit,” Davis said of the program savings.
Oshkosh [OSK] was chosen to build JLTV in late August over Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Humvee incumbent AM General. The contract to build the first batch of about 55,000 vehicles that will replace portions of the Army and Marine Corps Humvee fleets is estimated at $6.6 billion.
Delivery of the first Oshkosh JLTV is expected in October. Full rate production is scheduled to begin in early 2019.Oshkosh has parked an example of its JLTV on the show floor here, the first time it has been displayed as the clear program winner. Its debut as the Army favorite at Modern Day Marine in Quantico, Va., last year was clouded by Lockheed Martin’s initial protest.
Lockheed Martin protested the contract award to the Government Accountability Office. The company in December sued the Army in federal claims court when it perceived GAO would not rule in its favor. Lockheed abandoned the suit in early February, clearing all hurdles to JLTV production.
For the initial low-rate initial production contract, Oshkosh will build an expected total volume of 17,000 vehicles, as well as kits and sustainment services, over an eight-year period.
Oshkosh was allowed to continue production while Lockheed Martin’s case progressed through the court system. Production was initially halted between Lockheed Martin’s initial September protest to the GAO and mid-December.
“We incurred a day-for-day slip as a result of the GAO protest, which was 98 days,” Davis said. “It may be a little greater than that. … But the day-to-day slip started to push deliveries of the vehicles into the November timeframe.”
The total delay will likely be longer, because it interfered with the first operational test scheduled for October where soldiers and Marines would get hands-on with the vehicle, Davis said. Testing will then commence in November and December, when holidays will further stretch initial testing of the production vehicles, Davis said.
“We were encumbered by first a GAO protest that lasted 98 days followed by a short filing with the Court of Federal Claims,” Davis said. “That’s now behind us and so we’re fully operational and running.”