The U.S. Air Force is searching for alternate small business suppliers of the Rheimentall 25mm PGU-48/B frangible armor piercing ammunition for the F-35A fighter’s GAU-22 gun by General Dynamics [GD].
Lockheed Martin [LMT] builds the F-35.
“The purpose of this sources sought synopsis is to conduct market research to determine if responsible sources exist, to assist in determining if this [PGU-48/B replenishment spares] effort can be competitive and/or a total small business set-aside,” according to a Dec. 6 notice by Air Force Life Cycle Management Center.
“The PGU-48/B is a non-explosive, tungsten alloy kinetic energy penetrator in an aluminum non-discarding projectile body that is covered with a molded windscreen,” the notice said. “The government does not own the Technical Data Package for the tungsten penetrator or the projectile design. The performance and design is defined in performance specification SP201824802 and may be released upon request. The government has limited purpose rights to the Technical Data Package for the cartridge case design, propellant, and primer. These documents cannot be provided. (Drawings are competition restricted or contain proprietary information).”
The contracting office at Hill AFB, Utah, the location of the F-35A 388th Fighter Wing, is the buyer of such ammo, the Air Force said.
In fiscal 2022 and 2023, the Air Force budgeted a total of about $28 million to buy more than 186,000 PGU-48/B rounds against armored ground targets and fighter aircraft.
“Current programmed procurements will fulfill WRM [War Reserve Materiel] requirements,” per the Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget request. “Current stockpile inventory is 21 percent of total inventory objective.”
This year, DoD’s office of Industrial Base Policy (IBP) said that the Joint Program Executive Office for Armaments and Ammunition, Rheinmetall’s American Rheinmetall Munitions (ARM), Inc. subsidiary, and IBP’s Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office are funding the “installation and initial operating capability of a modernized case priming machine to support a pilot production line for [PGU-48/B] medium caliber munitions manufacturing in Camden, Arkansas.”
“The completed production line will enhance ammunition component supply chains by adding a third domestic medium-sized munitions supplier to the industrial base,” IBP said.
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy Laura Taylor-Kale said in the IBP statement that the effort “will further enable this domestic munition production capability in support the department’s warfighting needs.”
ARM CEO John Somich and Joseph Chan, ARM’s vice president of business development, said in the IBP statement that “adding a new source for primed cartridge cases provides a significant increase in available capacity and introduces more competition in a process that can be a major bottleneck, even for large prime contractors.”
“The stress on the supply chain to meet increasing demand has forced our industrial base to find new ways to produce at-scale,” they said. “This has made production capacity and mitigating constraints a strategic imperative for many stakeholders. Many professionals across the U.S. government and industry that focus on armament production have been raising concerns about legacy facilities and weak supply chains. Accelerating munition facilitization strengthens our ability to surge production.”