Oshkosh version of the upgunned Stryker with 30 mm MCWS gun turret (Medium Caliber Weapon System)
WASHINGTON: The Army decisively answered doubts that it could run a fair competition to upgun the 8×8 Stryker armored vehicle, awarding the Medium Caliber Weapons System (MCWS) contract to upstart Oshkosh instead of incumbent General Dynamics.
Oshkosh is best known for making a myriad of military trucks, not armored vehicle work. This Stryker win boosts its bid – teamed with Korean tank-maker Hanwha – to design the Army’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle to replace the M2 Bradley.
General Dynamics’ version of the upgunned Stryker with 30 mm MCWS gun turret (Medium Caliber Weapon System)
General Dynamics Land Systems builds the Stryker vehicle and won the initial contract to urgently install a 30 mm gun turret on 83 vehicles for the Europe-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which was badly undergunned compared to Russian vehicles. The Army then struggled to move from the urgent upgrade to a long-term Program Of Record. It initially awarded contracts to five firms to develop designs, then awarded a sixth after a protest, only to have at least two of the six companies drop out, raising concerns about competition. Then the program moved to a second round, in which three companies provided full-up vehicles for Army testing.
“We did have multiple competitors,” the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems, Brig. Gen. Glenn Dean, told reporters. “They were all in the competition… right up until the end.”
The Army worked closely with the competitors to keep them in the contest through the disruptions of COVID and delays in the availability of units to take the new equipment, even accepting nine months’ delay in the program. “Fortunately,” said program manager Col. William Venable, “we had the support of our higher headquarters and the Army to adjust the schedule in such a way that it kept those three vendors in the competition throughout.”
Today’s award to Oshkosh has a maximum potential value of $942 million over six years, but that’s only if the Army decides to buy enough gun turrets to upgrade six whole Stryker brigades: Current budget plans only definitively fund three. The option exercised to date is a delivery order for 91 vehicles worth approximately $130 million, 83 of which will equip a Fort Lewis, Wash.-based brigade – oriented on China and the Pacific. (The other eight are spares and training machines). The first vehicles will arrive at the unit for testing in May 2022, and the brigade will be fully equipped by December 2023.
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