UPDATED with Hill comment WASHINGTON: The Army is rebooting its program to replace the 1980s-vintage M2 Bradley, not cancelling it, the four-star chief of staff insisted this morning.

Army photo

Gen. James McConville

“Next Generation Combat Vehicle, just last week, we made the decision to cancel the solicitation we had out for the vehicles,” Gen. James McConville told an Association of the US Army breakfast. “We are fully committed to replacing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the future. However, like the Future Vertical [Lift] aircraft, we want to drive these before we buy them.

“For industry, that’s the strategy we’re going to take: We’re going to experiment, we’re going to prototype, we’re going to want to see what we have before we’re going to invest a large amount of money in these programs,” he continued. “We found out early in the process, after minimal investments, that our aggressive timeline did not permit industry to meet the requirements. We have taken a tactical pause on solicitations, we’re going to reset the requirements, we’re going reset the acquisition strategy and timeline, and then we’re going to come out and aggressively pursue this critical weapons system that we need for the future.”

Bell photo

Bell V-280 Valor tiltrotor in level flight with rotors facing forward. The V-280 is widely considered the leading candidate for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA)

Why did McConville choose the Future Vertical Lift effort as the model for success? Well, the general is a helicopter pilot himself, but it’s not just that. Army leaders have repeatedly praised FVL’s progress, because it has two “demonstrator” aircraft – essentially, early prototypes – already flying and showing the new technology works: the Bell V-280 Valor tiltrotor and the Sikorsky-Boeing SB>1 Defiant compound helicopter. (That said, Bell is about a year ahead on testing).

By contrast, only one company responded on time for the just-cancelled Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, General Dynamics Land Systems, and Army leaders have strongly hinted its prototype didn’t meet their requirements. Another competitor, a Raytheon-Rheinmetall team, was disqualified when their prototype missed the delivery deadline. Moving ahead with only a single vendor – and thus no competition – was controversial in Congress and within the Army itself, leading to last week’s decision to cancel the current solicitation and start over.

Photo courtesy Sikorsky and Boeing.

The Sikorsky-Boeing SB>1 Defiant on its first flight, March 21, 2019.

But for industry, there’s a catch. Those Future Vertical Lift prototypes are only working as well as they do because Bell, Sikorsky, and Boeing have invested far more of their own money in the program than has the Defense Department, by some accounts at a ratio of 4:1. The companies are willing to take a loss on their current contracts – known as the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration – for a chance to win the production contract and make their money back over the long-term. And Bell, Sikorsky, and Boeing are big enough to take that bet, because they’re making money on other aerospace programs, including in the civilian market. So, even if they don’t win the Army contract, the technology they developed for it might spin off to other applications.

Ground vehicle manufacturers like General Dynamics Land Systems are in a very different situation. They’re nowhere near as big as aerospace firms, because there’s no civilian market for a multi-ton, heavily armored, heavily armed tracked vehicle. In fact, there’s no military market outside the US Army and a few foreign counterparts. (Even the Marines are looking for something less heavy). GD has spent over $20 million on the Bradley replacement – we can’t tell you our source on that, but we’re pretty confident in it – and that’s investment with very little application to any other program.

Rheinmetall Photo

The Raytheon-Rheinmetall Lynx, recently disqualified from the Army’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle competition to replace the M2 Bradley.

We know at least one other company that had pursued the Bradley replacement dropped out without making a bid: BAE Systems, which makes the Bradley and is competing with GDLS to build the Mobile Protected Firepower light tank. Two other companies that were considered potential competitors didn’t publicly pursue the program at all: SAIC — which had bid unsuccessfully on other Army and Marine Corps combat vehicles — and Korea’s Hanwha. And Germany’s Rheinmetall, partnered with US-based Raytheon, made a very public push for its Lynx vehicle, only to be disqualified for failing to deliver the prototype on time, which seemed to many observers more like a pretext than a real problem.

The Army still has a chance to make the Bradley replacement program work. But after decades of failed attempts, it has to convince industry it’s worth their time – and money – to try.

Meanwhile Congress is watching with a wary eye, having been repeatedly burned by Army acquisition misfires in the past. “We expect a briefing on the decision later this month,” a Republican staffer for the House Armed Services Committee told us. “Members urged the Army to be cautious given the risk associated with such an aggressive acquisition strategy. The Army has made a tough call.  Since this was a middle-tier acquisition rapid prototyping effort, initially we see the logic in the decision, but we’ll have some tough questions at the briefing in a few weeks.”