Until now, the Army has been tight-lipped ever since it appeared the competitive effort was no longer competitive, as the service had received only one prototype submission.

“Today the U.S. Army will cancel the current solicitation for the Section 804 Middle Tier acquisition rapid prototyping phase of the [optionally manned fighting vehicle]. Based on feedback and proposals received from industry, we have determined it is necessary to revisit the requirements, acquisition strategy and schedule moving forward,” said Bruce Jette, the Army’s acquisition chief.

“Since its inception, the OMFV program has represented an innovative approach to Army acquisition by focusing on delivering an essentially new capability to armored brigade combat teams under a significantly reduced timeline compared to traditional acquisition efforts. The Army asked for a great deal of capability on a very aggressive schedule and, despite an unprecedented number of industry days and engagements to include a draft request for proposals over a course of nearly two years, all of which allowed industry to help shape the competition, it is clear a combination of requirements and schedule overwhelmed industry’s ability to respond within the Army’s timeline,” Jette said.

“The need remains clear. OMFV is a critical capability for the Army, and we will be pressing forward after revision.”

In October, the Army ended up with only one bidder in the OMFV competition — General Dynamics Land Systems. The service had planned to hold a prototyping competition, selecting two winning teams to build prototypes with a downselect to one at the end of an evaluation period.

Defense News broke the news that another expected competitor — a Raytheon and Rheinmetall team — had been disqualified from the competition because it had failed to deliver a bid sample to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, by the deadline.

A bellwether for what was to come in the prototyping competition happened earlier in the year when BAE Systems, which manufactures the Bradley, decided not compete, Defense News first reported.

And, according to several sources, Hanwha also considered competing but decided against the opportunity.

The CEO of BAE Systems’ U.S.-based business, Jerry DeMuro, told Defense News in a recent interview that the company didn’t regret its decision not to pursue OMFV as the requirements and schedule were previously laid out, but said it continues to talk to the Army about future opportunities.

“It was a very challenging program,” DeMuro said. “It always comes down to three things: requirements, schedule and funding. The schedule was very, very aggressive, especially early on, and at the same time trying to get leap-ahead technologies. There’s a little bit of dichotomy there.

“The requirements that were being asked for was going to require, in our estimation, significantly more development that could not be done in that time frame and significantly more capital than the Army was willing to apply.”

Jette said the Army had a large number of vendors interested in the effort, hosted 11 industry days and had a number of draft requests for proposals on the street, but, he said, “it’s always a challenge for industry. I was on the outside two years ago, and you get an RFP in after the discussions — it still cannot align with what you thought, and that is what you have to respond to is the RFP.”

The acquisition chief believes what happened in this case is there was “a large number interested, they started paring down, which started causing us some uncertainty about the competition, but we still had viable vendors in. And when you get out to actually delivering on those requirements, we had one vendor who had challenges meeting compliance issues with delivery, and the second vendor had difficulty meeting responsive issues, critical issues within the requirement — not knowing how to fulfill that.”

When pressed as to whether GDLS met the requirements with its bid sample, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, who was present at the media roundtable along with the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team leader Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, said the Army could not discuss results and findings regarding the company’s submission.

Several sources confirmed a letter was circulating around Capitol Hill from GDLS to the Army secretary that strongly urged the service to continue with the program without delay.

So now it’s back to the drawing board to ensure the Army gets the prototyping program right.

Jette took pains to stress that the OMFV effort is not a failed program with the likes of Comanche, Future Combat Systems, Crusader or the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter. “This is a continuing program. This is an initial effort at trying to get to a programmatic solution yielded, input that we needed to evaluate, which said we needed to revise our approach, not abandon the program or that it was a failure.”

Some major failed programs in the past, Jette noted, were canceled after spending large amounts of money and still moving along even though problems were identified as the service proceeded. Crusader cost about $2 billion, Comanche about $6.9 billion and Future Combat Systems about $19 billion, Jette said.

“We’ve spent a very small amount of money in trying to get to where we are, and in fact a good bit of the technology development that was part of the assessment phase is still totally recoverable,” he added.

Army Futures Command chief Gen. Mike Murray told the same group of reporters he is hesitant to call OMFV a program because it’s a prototyping program, not a program of record. “We are still committed to this. This is like a tactical pause,” he said.

The effort so far “gave us a great deal of clarity in understanding what is truly doable,” Jette noted.

Army leaders said they would be unable to estimate how long its renewed analysis on the program might take before proceeding with a new solicitation to industry, or what that would mean for the program’s schedule in its entirety. The original plan was to field OMFV in 2026.

Last month, Congress hacked funding for the OMFV prototyping program, providing $205.6 million in fiscal 2020, a reduction of $172.8 million, which would have made it impossible to conduct a competitive prototyping effort. What happens to that funding or congressional support for the overall program is unclear.

While sources confirmed to Defense News in early October that the failure with the OMFV prototyping effort revealed rifts between the acquisition community and the Army’s new modernization command, Army Futures Command, Jette said while there is a bit of “scuffing here and there” the two organizations are working together “much better.”

Murray added it is his view that the acquisition community and Army Futures Command is moving forward as “one team” with “one goal in mind.”

The Air Force needs a specialized vehicle for missile field security to replace the aging Humvees currently in operation, Maj. Gen. Michael Fortney, vice commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a December interview.

“We had been using up-armored Humvees for a long time,” he said.  According to the Air Force, some of those models date as far back as 1998 and have not been modernized since their purchase, which Fortney said creates problems in upkeep.

“Those [vehicles] are no longer going to be supportable in the DoD after a certain point in time. So what is the right vehicle for that mission set up there?” he said.

Oshkosh’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle is seen as one potential option. Air Force representatives visited Marine Corps Base Quantico in early December to see the ride in action, receiving briefings and demonstrations from Army and Marine Corps officials. Individuals from Air Force headquarters, Global Strike Command (AFGSC), AF Security Forces Center, VSCOS and Warner-Robins Air Logistics Complex were in attendance, Mesnard confirmed.

Should the Air Force decide to buy into the JLTV program, it could benefit from the economies of scale inherent to such a large procurement. The Army and Marine Corps plan to buy a total 54,599

vehicles over the course of the program.

The company delivered the first seven JLTVs to the Army and Marine Corps in late September. According to an Army statement, Oshkosh will provide about 100 vehicles over the next year for testing at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona.

And once full-rate production starts in 2019, the services hope that lower-than-expected unit prices can drive bigger purchases every year, shaving about $6 billion in costs, Scott Davis, the Army’s program executive officer for combat support and combat service support, said in an October news release.

Air Force officials stressed that no decision to procure the JLTV has been made. In an emailed response to questions, Mesnard said the service believes both military and commercial, off-the-shelf vehicles may be able to meet its requirements.

The Air Force on Dec. 21 issued a request for informationon tactical vehicles that will be used to help the service identify potential options ahead of a competition.

The RFI includes divides vehicles into “Level 1” — ultra-light variants less than 10,000 pounds — and a larger “Level 2” vehicle that can weigh up to 20,000 pounds. The JLTV, which has a curb weight of 14,000, fits into the heavier category.

Level 2 vehicles should also be able to meet speeds of at least 65 miles per hour, have a 3,000-pound payload capability, and have a fuel range of 350 miles while traveling at 35 miles per hour. The Level 1 vehicles have a smaller payload — only 1,500 pounds — but must be able to hit 75 mile per hour speeds.

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The number of vehicles AFGSC will buy depends on things like procurement cost, mix of light and medium variants, available budget, etc.,” Mesnard stated.

If the Air Force does opt for the JLTV, the service has also not determined whether it would need Oshkosh to modify the vehicles for service-specific requirements driven by the harsh, frigid climates of the northern-tier missile bases.

Cost considerations and long lead time would likely preclude the service from purchasing a clean-sheet design, Mesnard said, adding that “the Air Force would only pursue a service-specific buy if a suitable joint vehicle was not available to meet mission requirements.”

A spokeswoman for Oshkosh declined to provide specifics about the company’s level of involvement in the demonstrations to Air Force officials in Quantico, but signaled that the company would welcome adding a third US military service to its list of customers.

“While we defer to the US government on their program requirements and procurement plans, we are confident that the JLTV platform provides superior performance, off-road mobility and protection for all services, including the Air Force,” Jennifer Christiansen, Oshkosh’s vice president of global strategy and marketing, said in a statement. “Oshkosh stands ready to produce JLTVs for all services to ensure our troops receive the next generation equipment the need to successfully complete their missions.”

The FM 3-0 of 2008 focused on “Full Spectrum Operations” which describes the Army having to not only focus on defeating enemies but, at the same time, shape the situation through operations that stabilize the area.

The Army’s Operating Concept – debuted two years ago at AUSA – will drive the new doctrine. The AOC states the Army’s job is to “prevent, shape and win” in a “complex operational environment.”

Gen. David Perkins, the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command commander, said, in a recent statement on AUSA’s website, the doctrine and field manual is important in order to ensure the service is ready to deploy anywhere across the globe, engaging in a wide range of different types of military operations.

He noted one of the ideas the Army is exploring is “multi-domain battle” — a major focus at AUSA last week — “which recognized the inherently joint requirements of the interconnected air, land, maritime, space and cyber domains.”

Lundy also said the CAC is looking deeply at how it trains and develops its leaders and how education drives readiness — Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s top priority.

“We’ve got some work to do in our professional military education,” he said. The Army has “to be very dynamic,” so there are changes that need to be made in order to get the right balance in terms of how the service focuses on leadership, which includes a refocus on some technical and tactical skills that the service hasn’t had to perform recently or are new to the Army, Lundy added.

Based on several factors — from exercising a mission it hasn’t had to do in a very long time to moving equipment via rail and highway to dealing with winter weather in Northern Europe — Hodges predicts the ABCT will reach Polish assembly areas near Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area in roughly three weeks.

“I’m going to make all kinds of mistakes on this,” Hodges said, even though the Army has been rehearsing and drilling. “We haven’t done it in a long time.”

This exercise to move from the German port to Poland was tasked by Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the supreme allied commander in Europe, in order to demonstrate speed of assembly, Hodges noted.

Once the ABCT has assembled and prepared its equipment, such as loading ammunition, testing communications and camouflaging, in order to set up its posture “like a crisis response rehearsal,” Hodges said, the brigade will disperse to areas of responsibility aligned with the Atlantic Resolve mission.

Atlantic Resolve is the framework for the US mission to assure allies in Europe and deter Russia through exercises and operations.

One battalion will head to the Baltic region — Atlantic Resolve North — while another battalion will deploy to Romania and Bulgaria — Atlantic Resolve South — according to Hodges.

The bulk of the combat team will remain in Poland, staying in Polish barracks at training areas where some of the best ranges and maintenance facilities are situated, such as Drawsko Pomorskie, he said.

Over the course of the rotation, the ABCT will mass “a couple of times,” Hodges added.

While Poland’s national exercise Anakonda is held every other year and therefore will not be held in 2017, Hodge’s command has helped to coordinate opportunities for the ABCT to heavily participate in Saber Guardian, which will take place in July in Bulgaria and Romania. The exercise will consist of more than 30,000 soldiers with 20-plus nations, making it similar in size to Anakonda. The 82nd Airborne, the US Army’s global response force, will jump in like it did in Anakonda. Saber Guardian will also be linked to Sea Breeze — a maritime exercise in the Black Sea — and Noble Partner in Georgia.

The 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division out of Fort Riley, Kansas, will replace the first ABCT in September, Hodges said.

The commander said even though the Army is having to operate under a continuing resolutionfor the next three months, which means money is only available at 2016 funding levels, there would be enough money to move forward with the deployment of the first ABCT.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning told Defense News in an interview before AUSA that he was concerned over the impact the continuing resolution might have on the Pentagon’s special funding for assurance and deterrence in Europe, called the European Reassurance Initiative.

“ERI is oxygen for us,” Hodges said. “Without the ERI money, there is no rotation of forces, there’s no buildup of Army pre-positioned stock. In other words, there is no real capable deterrent force above and beyond what we have on the ground now … it’s essential to what we are doing.”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has stressed the importance of LRPF in order to establish air supremacy from the ground. McMaster said Russia has shown this capability, posing a major threat to the Ukrainian air force, for example.

The Army awarded two contracts through the Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon in August. “The contracts will initiate trade studies for systems and component-level requirements, analyze alternative technical solutions and contribute to risk identification for the program,” Dan O’Boyle, an Army spokesman, told Defense News.

In addition, two technology-maturation, risk-reduction agreements for missile design and prototype development and testing are expected to be awarded in the second quarter of fiscal 2017, focusing on design of the missile, the launch-pod missile container, and will culminate with a flight test to validate the prototype’s performance, O’Boyle said.

The program will also hold an Extended Range Missile Technology Demonstration to conduct risk-reduction of potential LRPF technologies, he added, and General Dynamics, Orbital ATK and Raytheon have been invited to participate.

The demonstration will be conducted this fall, O’Boyle said, and will guide the Army toward decisions on LRPF cost, schedule and performance.

Raytheon’s JR Smith, director of Advanced Land Warfare Systems, told Defense News in a recent interview that the company was awarded a $5.7 million contract to study design concepts and various components over the course of nine months. The company also submitted a proposal in July for the next step, the technology maturation and risk reduction component of development.

The TMRR is expected to culminate in three to four years with a series of guided flight tests and the Army will likely downselect to one contractor to enter into the engineering and manufacturing development phase, Smith said.

But three to four years is a long time to wait to get to EMD and, therefore, Smith said, Raytheon is “really trying to work very hard with the Army to see what we can do to accelerate development without incurring significant risk to the effort.”

LRPF is intended to ultimately replace the Lockheed Martin-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which was developed in the late 1970s and fielded in the early 1980s.

Misty Holmes, Lockheed Martin’s business development manager for LRPF, said the company, which also received a contract to run risk reduction for a future missile, is using its experience as the only remaining producer of long-range, tactical, surface-to-surface missiles employed by the Army today to develop its LRPF offering. Holmes said Lockheed could not disclose the contract amount.

The offering from Lockheed is expected to improve ATACMS range of 300-plus kilometers to 499 kilometers, the Army’s set requirement for a future missile, Holmes said, and will also have enhanced lethality and improved navigation systems.

Raytheon noted that the Army has indicated a strong desire to increase the rate of fire, so instead of fitting one missile per pod, the company plans to fit two in one pod with missiles that have 16-inch diameters, according to Smith.

The legacy ATACMS can be fired from multiple rocket launchers including the M270 Multiple Rocket Launch System and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

“We can make all kinds of warheads and payloads,” Smith said, but striking the balance between lethality, rate-of-fire and cost is where the challenge lies. “We are going to be trying do that in the next nine months under this contract.”

While Raytheon believes there’s a way to speed up procurement of LRPF, the Army said any project acceleration strategy is “pre-decisional at this time,” according to O’Boyle.

Light Reconnaissance Vehicle

Last year McMaster told Defense News a Light Reconnaissance Vehicle (LRV) was needed in the near term partly to provide an interim solution to the infantry brigade combat team’s lethality shortfall. He added that the Army doesn’t need a decade to develop an LRV, but at first glance across industry, the Army did not see any products offering all the features of its envisioned vehicle.

Yet, McMaster noted, there could be something to get the job done in the short term in order to get the mobile protected firepower capability the service needs.

In May, it seemed set that the Army would use the JLTV as an interim solution for the LRV, but according to acquisition leadership, that is not set in stone.

“I would not say the [JLTV] is going to be the LRV,” the Army’s acquisition chief, Katrina McFarland, told Defense News in a Sept. 29 interview at the Pentagon. “It is going to be looked at as a possibility because … we are looking at the [LRV] through the lens of [JLTV] in order to give us an understanding, conceptually, is that a reasonable, is that an appropriate … capability we seek inside the gap,” she said.

Williamson said the JLTV could be a good option because it’s a “very capable vehicle” as “budget pressure” is hindering the ability to buy new. He added there would need to be modifications to consider because the JLTV does not have enough seats for an entire reconnaissance squad and would need weapon mounts and some other equipment for the reconnaissance mission.

The decision is “definitely not” made when it comes to JLTV serving as LRV, even though it is considered an “attractive candidate,” Davis said. Right now, “we need two things proved and validated — requirements and resourcing. We depend on those to kick anything off and right now neither of those have been solidified,” he said.

Davis said the Army is investigating JLTV as LRV with Oshkosh, but is still working with the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to help shape the requirements.

“Once we get those finalized, we will know not only what we will have to do sort of inside of JLTV to make it accommodate those requirements, but it will also give us a better sense of a wider perspective of alternatives so that as we move toward an LRV program, the leadership has choices and cost estimates and all that stuff,” Davis said.

Given the Army’s interest, Davis noted, it’s possible that “sometime in the first half of next year, we should be able to get ourselves in position with a path ahead.”

Ground Mobility Vehicle

The Army identified a critical shortfall in the IBCT’s ability to rapidly deploy in restrictive areas with protected firepower essential to securing terrain or lodging counterattacks, the strategy states. The vehicle requirements to meet this shortfall were noted as the most pressing among the priorities laid out in the strategy.

This means the Army is looking to procure a GMV fast.

McMaster said the plan was to get three battalions’ worth of vehicles and assess them for possible fielding. The Army spent the summer of 2014 trying out vehicles at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and has continued experimentation with the 18th Airborne Corps out of Fort Benning, Georgia.

The Army kicked off an analysis of alternatives the week before AUSA last year, and that study is complete, Davis said.

“We have gotten the final version of the AOA and we’ve got all of our acquisition planning set,” he added. The AOA confirmed that the requirements the Army laid out for GMV “can be met within sort of the cost parameters and technical parameters of a program,” according to Davis.

But since GMV is considered a new start, and movement forward is now based on fiscal 2017 funding, the program can’t progress, Davis said. Congress passed a continuing resolution last week which funds the government for the next three months at fiscal 2016 levels.

“We are unable to actually execute anything officially toward a program of record until we get a defense appropriation,” Davis said. “We’ve got a team standing by and they’ve done the due diligence to work with TRADOC to support the AOA and construct the [request for proposals].”

He added, “We had hoped to be moving farther forward, but some things you just can’t help.”

• Leaders with limited training availability preferred to use that time on live training, when available.

• Leaders who had not been personally trained on the available system were less likely to use it.

• Leaders who were presented with specific training guidance that incorporated virtual systems into an overall approach were more likely to use them.

Spc. Felicia Anne Smith, 650th Regional Support Group culinary specialist, trains on the Virtual Clearance Training Suite system simulator, at the Taylor Hall U.S. Army Reserve Center in Las Vegas. With this virtual training, Soldiers were guided step by step through the different levels of detection and identification so that they could neutralize explosive hazards. These methods and systems are the future of warfare on the battlefield.

Photo Credit: Capt. Fernando Ochoa/Army

The GAO’s analysis of Army regulations found that while virtual-training development requirements instruct developers to consider compatibility, manpower costs, transportability and other factors, they do not require consideration of training time, usage rates or even specific training tasks, in most circumstances.

Without such criteria, “the Army does not have the information needed to evaluate the amount of virtual training capabilities needed to achieve training tasks and proficiency goals during operational training,” according to the report.

Not only does the Army have multiple agencies charged with developing and analyzing virtual training platforms, the program evaluations within the same agency don’t always use the same methodology. The report found that the seven analyses conducted by the Army Training Support Center since 2012 involved four different types of analysis, and even included different approaches within the types.

Defense Department officials agreed with GAO’s recommendation to standardize this process, as well as the need for the secretary of the Army to provide updated guidance on the incorporation of virtual systems into the training timeline.

The Army likely will link its changes to the virtual training landscape to other major milestones outlined in the report. In December, for instance, the Army is expected to establish readiness objectives at the unit level, and in February it plans to publish updates to training regulations regarding changes to mandatory training.