By Emelie Rutherford
Oshkosh Corp. [OSK] is on track to build all of the new, lighter mine-resistant vehicles the Pentagon wants by next April, and expects last Friday’s vehicle order to be followed by another award in the near future, a company executive said yesterday.
The Pentagon ordered 1,700 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicles (M-ATVs) from Oshkosh on July 31, raising to 3,944 the number of the new Afghanistan-bound trucks it has bought from the company since it won an industry competition on June 30. Andy Hove, executive vice president and president of Defense for Oshkosh, said he is confident the Pentagon is sticking to its plan to buy the remaining desired 1,300 M-ATVs from his firm.
“I just turn to the customer who has made it very clear that given the unique situation in Afghanistan they feel they need to just get one single vehicle, they need to get that as quickly as they can,” Hove said in an interview. “And all of their actions are consistent with following through with their original acquisition strategy.”
Oshkosh beat four competitors in its bid to build the M-ATV, a lighter and more maneuverable version of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAP), which is built by multiple truck builders. The Pentagon’s current requirement is for 5,244 M-ATVs.
Marine Corps Systems Command head Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan told reporters on July 1 that after the Pentagon’s initial order of 2,244 M-ATVs from Oshkosh on June 31 he expected the remaining 3,000 to be ordered by the end of July. Hove said the fact that just 1,700 M-ATVs were ordered on July 31 is not a sign of any deviation in the Pentagon’s plans to buy all M-ATVs from Oshkosh; and he said his firm still plans, as it did in June, to build all 5,244 M-ATVs by the end of March.
“If (the Pentagon officials) stay on track as they are now with placing orders, we will be able to build out to 5,244 by the end of March,” he said.
The vehicles ordered last Friday will cover production through January, he said. Hove said he expects the Pentagon to order additional vehicles from his firm by September.
“(Pentagon officials) need to synchronize a number of different things in addition to placing the trucks that they’re getting from Oshkosh on order,” he said. “It would not be unusual for then to take a little bit of time and figure out how to get all that stuff lined up before they make the next order.”
Oshkosh has already presented 46 M-ATVs to the government as of July 30, he said, which is one more vehicle than the 45 it committed to deliver by 30 days after the initial order.
Hove said some of those 46 M-ATVs already have been shipped to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in Charleston, S.C., where they are outfitted with government- furnished equipment (GFE) before being shipped to theater.
Hove said his firm prepared the vehicles so the GFE can be quickly installed and the Pentagon can field the first M-ATVs to Afghanistan in October, as desired.
Oshkosh is being careful to stay in communication with firms in the supply chain, and is planning to hold a supplier conference on the M-ATV program next week, he said.
Hove acknowledged the program is not immune to auto-industry woes, and said some M-ATV suppliers already have gone out of business. In all instances Oshkosh was able to replace the supplier, he said.
“It’s something we are watching very closely,” he said about the health of suppliers. “I haven’t seen any issue we have not been able to work around. And in many cases…we identify those things ahead of time and we have alternative suppliers or second sources we can go to. And if there’s a high-risk area we’ll not generally get locked into one single supplier in order to make sure that we don’t have the risk of ultimately that they fail.”
The other M-ATV bidders were BAE Systems‘ Global Tactical Systems business; BAE’s U.S. Combat Systems unit; Navistar Defense LLC [NAV]; and Force Dynamics LLC, a joint venture between Force Protection, Inc. [FRPT] and General Dynamics [GD].