The U.S. Army has tapped BAE Systems and General Dynamics to help decide if the military branch will upgrade or replace its existing fleet of Bradley combat vehicles, Defense News reported Monday.
Joe Gould writes the companies were awarded $28 million each to design and assess technologies for the Future Fighting Vehicle.
“As we develop a new system, we can do it quicker, and it may be 80 percent of what we want initially, but in the next iteration, it will be 90 percent, and then it’ll be 100 percent,” Gen. Ray Odierno, chief of staff at the Army, told reporters.
He also noted the military service also wants to procure up to 50,000 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles to replace the Humvee, according to a report by Brendan McGarry of DoD Buzz.
AM General, Lockheed Martin and Oshkosh have delivered a total of 22 JLTV models through their contracts with the Army.
“The JLTV is one that we feel very comfortable with and I think you’ll see us continuing to invest in that into the future,” Odierno was quoted as saying by DoD Buzz.
The Army could award a low-rate initial production contract for the program this summer, McGarry reports.
