The people that built the X-37 unmanned spaceplane and the X-51 Mach five missile now want to bring you an ultra-lightweight truck. Can brains this big think that small? The beautifully named Phantom Badger vehicle looks a little out of place alongside other products of Boeing’s famous Phantom Works division. In fact, Boeing itself looks…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.ROC-X – The solution to organic precision strike capabilities
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
A very small company competing to build the Army’s lightest vehicles just got a big lift from a heavy hitter. “This levels the playing field,” Vyper Adamas president Shane Sterling told me of his firm’s new alliance with Spartan Chassis. “We as a company now have the industrial might behind us to produce our product.” That might…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: “In the next two years,” Army chief of staff Ray Odierno said today, the service could move out on four new combat vehicles and reboot its aging inventory for a new era of war. They range from a parachute-droppable light truck for Airborne soldiers to a scout car, a light tank, and a new…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATE: Lockheed Martin won’t compete Want a pink truck? “If a colonel says, ‘I want to paint it pink,’ it’ll get painted pink in about five minutes,” boasts Shane Sterling, president of Vyper Adamas. That’s the kind of speed with which smaller companies can move, he says: “We don’t have the levels of bureaucracy that a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
On Monday, truck makers will submit data to the Army on potential candidates for the Ultra-Light Combat Vehicle. ULCV has to be big enough to carry nine fully equipped infantrymen, small enough to sling-load under a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, and tough enough to parachute out the back of a C-130 or C-17. UCLV is…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The race to replace the iconic Humvee has entered its final stretch. Today, the Army gave competing contractors AM General, Oshkosh, and Lockheed Martin the final Request For Proposal for production of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. The competitors have until February 5 to ask the government questions and must submit their proposals by Feb.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
[UPDATED with Pentagon confirmation] The better-protected, more-mobile replacement for the Humvee took a big step forward this month, when all three competitors’ vehicles completed a crucial series of military tests. All three have also completed a government Production Readiness Review to certify their ability to mass-produce their vehicle. Next comes the final Request For Proposals (RFP) for…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
BAE Systems’ LR-PGK: The Superior Anti-Jam Solution
Going the distance to defeat emerging jam threats.
WASHINGTON: It’s six days until the largest defense conference of the year, the Association of the US Army’s annual meeting, and here at Breaking Defense our email runneth over. Amidst the missives touting everything from “e-learning solutions” to free steak dinners for reporters, though, this one in particular caught our eye. On first sight, it’s a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
[CORRECTED data on competitor Oshkosh] LOCKHEED MARTIN “LIGHTHOUSE,” SUFFOLK, VA: “We’re in a really tough competition…a knife fight in [a] phone booth,” said Tom Kelly, who runs Lockheed Martin’s government relations for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program. In the defense contracting world writ large, Lockheed is the 800-pound gorilla. In the three-way competition to replace…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.AM General’s corporate ancestors built jeeps in World War II. The company designed and still builds the military’s iconic Humvee. But in the battle to build the Humvee’s replacement, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, AM General is ironically not the incumbent but the scrappy underdog. [Follow these links to read more and see video about…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.AUSA: It may sound ambitious, even hubristic, that the Army wants to fold all its modernization programs into a single 30-year plan. But the long-range look is all about living within limits. The service wants to keep researching and developing 21st century weapons like the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) truck and the tank-like Ground…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.More good news for Oshkosh ( http://aol.it/Trqo2B ): Marines buy 260 more MTVR trucks for $67 million — see http://bit.ly/P3FPNw SydneyFreedberg
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.[UPDATED 12:45 pm] Truck maker Navistar is withdrawing the protest it filed Friday with the Government Accountability Office over the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program, company spokeswoman Elissa Koc told Breaking Defense this morning. Had Navistar persisted, its protest probably would have delayed JLTV development for months while the GAO investigated whether the military ran…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.UPDATED: Navistar has withdrawn its protest — click here for the latest. Buy 54,599 armored trucks at $250,000 each and that works out to roughly $13.6 billion. That’s the military’s current plan to build Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs), which will replace most of the Army and Marine Corps’ vulnerable Humvees and unmaneuverable MRAPs (The…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
