HUNSTVILLE, Ala. – Anticipated savings within the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program could allow the US Army to field its Humvee replacement earlier and quicker, the Army's program executive officer for combat support and combat service support said.
And t Those savings are a result of a savvy acquisition strategy.
"We believe we are going to save between 10 and 15 percent from our budgeted amount on the acquisition of JLTV," Scott Davis told a group of reporters Tuesday at the Association of the US Army's Global Force Symposium.
The Army then decided to take "any resources that were available from that and reapply it to the program to help move it forward," he added. "So we expect if that happens that instead of finishing fielding in the early 2040 timeframe, will be in the mid-2030s because we will be able to apply those savings to the vehicle and build them that much faster and it ends up saving about a net of five years," Davis explained.
The JLTV program is finally able to move ahead after work had to stop stopped on the program for 98 days when while Lockheed Martin protested the Army’s award to Oshkosh Defense to build the vehicles. Lockheed then filed a lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims because it claimed newly supplied Army information that emerged toward the end of the GAO’s protest process was enough to move the protest to court. Oshkosh did not have to stop work while the lawsuit played out in court. Lockheed dropped its lawsuit last month.
The Army expects to field the first vehicle delivery in October. and t The service is on track to reach a full-rate production decision in 2019.
Oshkosh's vice president for Global Integrated Product Support, Mike Ivy, said the company is delivering its first trucks to the Army in September and is prepared to deliver at any rate the Army requests.
Davis said the JLTV program is serving as a model, not only in Army acquisition, but on several occasions at higher levels. The Pentagon's acquisition chief Frank Kendall has asked the program managers to talk about how the acquisition strategy was implemented, he noted. The strategy "drove some vendor behaviors based on the way we did source selection," and led to incentives, Davis said.
The JLTV savings can be attributed to "stable requirements, mature technologies and a very, very good competition between three great industry partners that all had tremendous offers. All three of those things sort of converged to give us that kind of a benefit," David said.
Oshkosh beat out both Humvee-maker AM General and Lockheed for the $6.7 billion low-rate initial production contract award to build 16,901 vehicles, but the entire contract is expected to be worth up to $30 billion.
Email: jjudson@defensenews.com
Twitter: @JenJudson
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
