Textron Systems [TXT] has officially submitted a bid offering its Ripsaw M3 platform for the Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) competition, and said it expects a decision on awards for the program’s initial prototype phase in September.
After showcasing a technology demonstrator of the Ripsaw M3 at the AUSA conference in Washington, D.C., last October, David Phillips, Textron’s senior vice president for land and sea systems, told
Defense Daily the company is already underway building the first two platforms that would be provided to the Army if selected.
“Fast forward from AUSA, we’ve continued to invest. We continue what I call our maturation path,” Phillips said in an interview. “We’ve continued to iterate, design and develop.”
The Army in late March released a Request for Prototype Proposals (RPP) for RCV, detailing a three-phased effort that will start with selecting up to four vendors to deliver test vehicles by August 2024 (Defense Daily, March 29).
The new RCV prototyping effort follows the Army’s testing the last few years with prototype vehicles in light and medium variants, to include experimenting with Textron’s larger Ripsaw M5 platform as an RCV-Medium (RCV-M).
Phillips noted Textron ultimately delivered five Ripsaw M5s to the Army for experimentation, four of which have been tested, live fired and safety certified and which were also used in a soldier operational experiment at Fort Hood in Texas for force-on-force exercises.
“There’s been a lot of learning from the RCV-M program in terms of reliability and ruggedness. We’ve got over 2,000 miles on those systems. We’ve got a lot of direct soldier feedback,” Phillips said, noting the smaller Ripsaw M3 platform shares 75 percent commonality at the line replacement unit item level with the larger M5.
Textron then unveiled the smaller Ripsaw M3 tech demonstrator in October, with Phillips at the time noting the platform’s modularity and design considerations aimed at the Army’s plan to focus on pursuing the lighter RCV-L variant (Defense Daily, Oct. 12 2022).
“It was a prototype, a proof of principle, kind of a de-risker for us to get to the point we’re at now where we’ve transitioned that into a producible product,” Phillips said on Tuesday. “We’ve got a warm production line. We’re building two [Ripsaw M3s] right now. That kind of helps us in terms of de-risking schedule to maintain that warm production line off of the production line that delivered the five [Ripsaw M5] systems to the Army.”
As with the Ripsaw M5, Textron’s team for offering the M3 also includes its Howe & Howe subsidiary and Teledyne FLIR [TDY], with the latter providing a 360-degree situational awareness system and the operator control interface for the platform.
The Ripsaw M3 weighs 18,000 pounds, a 13,000 pound curb weight and 5,000 pound payload capacity, which is below the Army’s 21,000 pound requirement for RCV, has 63-square feet of flat deck space for payload integration, features a hybrid-electric drive design and can reach speeds above 30 miles per hour, according to Textron.
Sara Willett, Textron’s program director for land systems, told Defense Daily the company’s focus on modularity and adaptability for the platform was reflected in the Army’s RPP, which she said focused on “the common chassis approach, the ability to easily integrate modular mission payloads, along with requirements for growth, both from a payload perspective and from a compute processing power perspective”
Phillips noted the Army is not intending to focus its work on the first phase of RCV prototyping around payloads, but will rather look at assessing the ruggedness and reliability of the platforms.
“As they normally do, they’ll go try to break these things. And we want ours to kind of stand out and take advantage of all the experience that we’ve gained through all the testing that the Army’s done with our system,” Phillips said, adding that a future Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase will likely focus more on payload integration.
While the tech demonstrator Textron previously showcased was swim-capable, Phillips confirmed the Ripsaw M3 offered for the Army will not be, but the design allows for a modification to do so if it’s a requirement in the future.
“We’re tracking the Army’s requirements. We’ve shown that it is within the art of the possible if they wanted it. And I would tell you, in the systems that we’re building that native capability remains but then you would have to do some type of a kit later on. But you still have the potential to do it,” Phillips said.
Willett added that it’s likely the Army may explore swim capability for RCV in a subsequent second phase of the prototyping effort.
“The work we did with the technology demonstrator puts us in a really good position for phase two of the RCV program where the option to have either an amphibious kit or wet gap capability will likely be included. So we’re set up really well for that from how we designed the core vehicle and what we’ve already done with the technology demonstrator,” Willett said.
Oshkosh Defense [OSK] and BAE Systems have also previously confirmed their interest in pursuing the RCV program, which may culminate in a production contract worth around $607 million for 211 robotic vehicles.
The first phase for the RCV effort includes awarding deals worth up to $13.8 million to no more than four vendors, with each firm tasked with delivering two platforms.
The Army will then select one vendor from that group for a second phase, which is expected to be valued at $118.9 million and cover delivery of nine full-system prototypes.