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Army concept for how its future Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle attacks

WASHINGTON: The Army has redesigned its Request For Proposals to replace the Bradley troop carrier to give industry “maximum latitude” to innovate, Brig. Gen. Richard Coffman told reporters this morning. It’s even removed all classified data to let foreign companies participate fully. But one thing will be absolutely mandatory: compliance with a new set of technical standards and interfaces – known as a Modular Open Systems Architecture – that the service is developing for all its future combat vehicles.

Most Infantry Fighting Vehicles on the global market – including the only publicly announced contender, the Rheinmetall Lynx – look a lot like the Reagan-era M2 Bradley: They’re tracked machines with a driver in the hull, a commander and gunner in the turret, and five to nine infantry soldiers in the back, transported under armor protection until they jump out for the final assault.

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The M2 Bradley has been repeatedly upgraded since its introduction, but it’s 40 years old.

In previous attempts to replace the Bradley, the Army gave industry rigid requirements, specifying everything from passenger capacity to gun caliber to maximum weight. But the new Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle will be different. While the Army has mandated a crew of two, both sitting in the hull with an unmanned turret, it will let industry’s design teams suggest all the other specs.

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman

“We’ve got companies out there… that have come and said, hey listen, ‘we don’t want to have to six/eight/10 people in the back. We want to have two, and we want to make a very small vehicle,” said Coffman, the director of Next Generation Combat Vehicles at Army Future Command. “We may need 15 OMFVs to move [a platoon of] 30,” he said, instead of today’s platoon of four Bradleys – and the new RFP would allow that.

“Or maybe they can find an innovative way to move 10 soldiers with only three vehicles and make it small and light and powerful, I don’t know,” Coffman continued. “Perhaps not every vehicle looks the same. perhaps one has the weapon system on it … while another is carrying just the soldiers and gear.”

“We don’t know what each industry partner’s solution will be, but we’re giving them maximum latitude to show us,” he said.

The current RFP, for what’s called Phase II of OMFV, asks only for digital “concept designs,” not fully detailed construction plans: The Army will see how these designs perform in simulations, get feedback from actual combat soldiers, and give industry a chance to make changes. At some point, this refinement process will get into classified data, but by that time the Army expects any interested foreign companies to be able to get the necessary clearances.

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The Army’s proposed schedule for the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program.

Then in 2023, the Army will hold another competition to design (Phase III) and build (Phase IV) actual prototype vehicles. Companies don’t have to win a Phase II concept design award in 2021 to be eligible to compete for the Phase III award in 2023. That said, the Phase II winners will have the advantage of getting to improve their designs with government funding and regular feedback, putting them in prime position for Phase III.

Meanwhile, in parallel, the Army will start drafting its formal requirements for OMFV. But, Coffman promised, it won’t lock those down before it’s gone through multiple rounds of back and forth with industry over multiple years. That’s a stark contrast to traditional programs – including an earlier, cancelled attempt at OMFV – that tried to prescribe strict performance specifications at the start.

“No decision before its time” is a driving principle of the new program, Coffman said. “Previous programs have required the government to be omniscient, and we all know that we’re not omniscient. We can’t predict what’s going to happen in seven years or eight years or nine….so we are not going to put a nail in a single requirement until we have to.”

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Instead of strict technical requirements, the Army is specifying broad “Characteristics Of Need” (CON) for its Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle.

But when those requirements are finalized, they will be as binding as on any old-school program. In fact, in some ways, contractors may find the final requirements more restrictive than they’re used to, because the US government has gotten sick of companies selling it proprietary technology that isn’t compatible with other companies’ products and can only be upgraded by the original manufacturer, for a hefty fee. Instead, over the next several years, it will work with industry to develop technical standards and common interfaces that ensure everything works together and new upgrades are simply plug-and-play.

Several sets of standards already exist, such as the VICTORY architecture used on the latest models of the M1 Abrams and the 8×8 Stryker. But they need to be combined, updated, and expanded to handle the technical complexity, not only of OMFV, but of other future Army combat vehicles.

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Brig. Gen. Glenn Dean briefs reporters on OMFV by video.

“This is broader than just OMFV,” said Brig. Gen. Glenn Dean, who as Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems (PEO-GCS) will run the program. “This is for combat vehicles in general. Tactical vehicles [i.e. trucks] will share an element of this, and certainly robotic systems.”

The Army is already experimenting with Robotic Combat Vehicles, built by various contractors but using common autonomy software developed by the Army. Parts of that RCV “kernel” may be ported over to OMFV to let it operate unmanned in certain missions – hence the “optionally manned” part of the name. But, Coffman said, “we’ll work with industry if they have a better kernel”: That’s one of the things he’s looking forward to finding out in back-and-forth of OFMV concept designs.

It’ll be hard enough developing compatible code and common physical components for use across multiple types of manned and unmanned vehicles. But the Army’s ambitions are bigger than that: In exercises like Project Convergence, it’s experimenting with ways for ground vehicles to share tactical data on targets and threats with long-range artillery and aircraft – and it wants to link in foot soldiers as well.

The Modular Open Systems Architecture, Dean said, must connect OMFV “seamlessly” to the targeting goggles worn by its infantry passengers, a militarized Microsoft HoloLens known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System. That will allow the foot troops to see through the vehicle’s sensors and get a better sense of the situation before they get out and expose themselves to fire. (Though Dean didn’t say so, this could work in reverse as well: Once the infantry get out, the vehicle crew could see through the built-in cameras in their goggles, giving them a much wider view).

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Soldiers test the latest, ruggedized version of the IVAS targeting goggles at Fort Picket in October 2020.

“Our combat vehicles need to be architected in such a way that they can not only connect back to the network, but connect to and can feed the IVAS system,” Dean said. “We’re doing some of that effort on Stryker right now… but OMFV needs to be built with that from the ground up.”

How important is this kind of technical compatibility across disparate systems?  It’s so important that the Army will weigh it as heavily as physical performance in evaluating industry proposals.

“Industry’s going to be graded principally on two things,” Dean said. One is their approach to meeting the nine broad “characteristics” – from survivability to mobility to ease of training – laid out for the OMFV itself. The other is “how are they going to incorporate common Modular Open Systems Architecture?”

Companies now have 120 days to submit bids to the government, Dean said. That’s longer than the draft timeline the Army proposed back in July, because companies asked for more time to put together their proposals. (The extra time up front should also cut about two months out of what had been a four-month gap in the original funding plan for 2023). Meanwhile, in January, the Army will formally launch a new public-private consortium – an increasingly common approach – to work on MOSA.

“Industry’s proposals are due back 16th April,” Dean told reporters. “We anticipate contract award in July.”