Selections of the winners for the Army’s Bradley infantry fighting vehicle replacement are expected to be announced in 2023.
This past summer, the service requested proposals from the defense industry to design and build prototypes for the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program. It is one of the 35 signature systems the Army is trying to deliver to troops by 2030, originally reported by Army Times sister publication Defense News.
Bids for the vehicle program were due in November.
The Army, however, has also revised its request for proposals several times based on feedback from industry. In September, one revision called for bidders to conduct what essentially amounted to an engineering test, where each team completed a task on modular, open-systems architecture.
Army leaders also sought to make more progress on the program, developing ways to speed up the process. One solution involved lowering the number of required prototypes required from 12 to seven with the possibility of adding four more.
Design reviews, additionally, are proposed by bidders themselves, rather than adhering to a hard and fast deadline for prototypes. Depending on the strategy of the company, bidders may decide to develop quickly with fewer capabilities, while another takes longer to develop a more aggressive system.
The service hopes to award contracts to proceed to three teams to go through the detailed design phase in fiscal year 2023 and fiscal 2024. The prototyping phase is set to begin in fiscal 2025.
Zamone “Z” Perez is a reporter at Military Times. He previously worked at Foreign Policy and Ufahamu Africa. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he researched international ethics and atrocity prevention in his thesis. He can be found on Twitter @zamoneperez.
