An 82nd Airborne 3rd Brigade Combat Team soldier trains with the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) as a part of Project Convergence 2022. (TRADOC via Twitter)
WASHINGTON — Deterring China in the Indo-Pacific region remains the US Department of Defense’s top priority, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year provided Army leaders with the opportunity to tout the service’s role supporting allies and partner nations via training and weapons deliveries.
Although Army leaders faced a confluence of challenges in 2022 including a recruiting shortfall, problems with military housing and accusations of “wokeness,” the year also saw the effectiveness of Army-centric weapons like the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), Javelin manportable, anti-tank system, and the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles on today’s battlefield.
“You don’t need armor if you don’t want to win,” Army Chief of Staff Gen James McConville told reporters during an October 10 press conference when asked about lessons learned from the war and future of the M1 tank.
“You never want to present your adversary with one dilemma… if you just push tanks at them,” those can be defeated just like Russian tanks inside of Ukraine, he added. “That’s why you want infantry, you want armor, you want attack aviation, you want [long-range] fires [and] intelligence. All those systems working together.”
[This article is one of many in a series in which Breaking Defense reporters look back on the most significant (and entertaining) news stories of 2022 and look forward to what 2023 may hold.]
Yes, 2022 provided the service with an opportunity to reassert its contribution to the joint force, and allies and partners, but with that opportunity the service also faced practical challenges like backfilling its weapons stockpile. To do this, the Army issued a variety of contracts, including one for $14.4 million to Lockheed Martin for the company to bolster its HIMARS production capacity. Another contract soon followed in December for an additional $431 million for Lockheed to produce these additional launchers.
“This award will enable us to replenish our own inventory while providing critical capabilities for our allies and international partners,” Douglas Bush, the Army’s Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, said in a December 2 announcement. “We remain committed to getting things on contract as quickly as possible to ensure our stocks are rapidly replenished.”
In the same vein, the service also awarded the Javelin Joint Venture between Raytheon Missiles and Defense and Lockheed with a $311 million contract in September for the production of more than 1,800 Javelins.
Although lots of money was funneled towards the Ukrainian-Russia war this year, 2022 wasn’t only about established weapons programs. Army leaders did move forward with developing a variety of new platforms while also changing course on others. Here are just a few of the top decisions unveiled in 2022.
Rolling On
Several Army ground vehicle programs entered new phases this year, while others were stopped in their tracks.
For example, General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) was the big winner for the service’s new light tank competition, and it received a $1.14 billion contract to produce up to 96 Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicles. The company’s winning prototype is crewed by four soldiers — a commander, a gunner, a loader, and a driver — and GDLS is in the process of modifying the prototype based on soldier feedback.
BAE Systems was also competing for the MPF contract with a lighter prototype crewed by three soldiers, but it was disqualified earlier in the year due to undisclosed noncompliance issues.
However, 2022 wasn’t all bad news for BAE. The Army selected the company’s Beowulf as its new Cold Weather All-Terrain Vehicle (CATV) and provided BAE with a seven-year, $278 million production contract.
BAE also delivered at least 130 Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles (AMPVs) to the Army by early October, and the first Army unit is set to begin training with the vehicles in January 2023, Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems Major General Glenn Dean, told reporters at the time.
In other ground vehicle news, the Army decided to hold off on pursuing a Robotic Combat Vehicle-Medium (RCV-M) fleet this year and said it will instead first focus on developing an RCV-Light (RCV-L) line. Under this new multi-pronged approach, the service will continue experimenting with the RCV-L prototypes it acquired from QinetiQ North America and Pratt Miller (now owned by Oshkosh Defense) based on a “variant” of the Expeditionary Modular Autonomous Vehicle (EMAV). In parallel, the Army plans to host RCV-L competition and release a draft solicitation by early 2023.
Meanwhile, it is pencils down for the Army’s latest attempt at replacing its aging fleet of M2 Bradleys. All five companies participating in the service’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) concept design phase – American Rheinmetall Vehicle, BAE Systems, GDLS, Oshkosh Defense, and Point Blank Enterprises – have submitted their bids for the next phase of the program, Breaking Defense confirmed. However, a dark horse may be lurking and seeking one of the three spots available to move on with OMFV development. The Army is expected to announce in the first half of 2023 which teams it has selected to participate in the next 54-month OMFV development stint that includes phase 3 (detailed design) and phase 4 (prototype build and test) activities.
The Army’s Common Tactical Truck (CTT) competition is also in a downselect phase, and the service is expected to select up to three teams to proceed with the effort next year. The service is seeking a modified commercial off-the-shelf CTT fleet to perform missions currently conducted by Palletized Load System A1 vehicles, Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTT) A4, M1088 Tractors, and M915 Line Haul Tractors. Eventually, a final downselect could lead to a $5.1 billion production contract for 7,265 vehicles.
Up In The Skies And Below
After a multi-month delay this year, Army acquisition officials announced in December that Bell Textron’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor had edged out Sikorsky-Boeing’s coaxial rotor Defiant X, and will continue on in Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) development.
Service officials have not yet detailed why they selected the Valor beyond saying that the decision was based on a best-value determination.
“We were seeking the best value approach,” Maj. Gen. Robert Barrie, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Aviation, told reporters on December 5. “Using…the requirements that the Army had for us, we then had an evaluation using folks from across the enterprise to go towards a set of factors that would deliver a best value approach to the Army.” While declining to spell those factors out, Barrie emphasized the service did a “comprehensive analysis of a variety of factors.”
Bell has now received a deal worth up to $1.3 billion with the initial obligation valued at $232 million over the next 19 months. These initial dollars will enable the company to continue working on the preliminary design of the aircraft and deliver “virtual prototypes of a potentially model-based system,” Barrie said. While Bell will not be building an actual aircraft during this period, if the program proceeds as planned an unspecified number of Valors could be produced under a deal worth up to $70 billion.
In addition to Valor decision, the service continued developing several missiles this year including Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) and awarded the company with a $158 million contract to produce additional early operational capability missiles. The company also delivered the first of four Typhon weapon system prototypes to the Army. Typhon is designed to fire Standard Missile-6 or Tomahawk missiles around the range gap between the PrSM and a Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon also in development.
Bring On New Soldier Kit
When it comes to the individual soldier, the service announced several key acquisition decisions this 2022.
Among them was the decision to award Sig Sauer with a 10-year contract valued up to $4.7 billion for its Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program. The company’s offering will now be the XM5 NGSW-Rifle (NGSW-R) to replace the M4/M4A1 carbine weapon and the XM250 NGSW-Automatic-Rifle (NGSW-AR) to replace the close-combat force’s M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in the Automatic Rifleman role. The service also selected the company’s 6.8 mm ammunition for the program.
If the program proceeds as planned, close-combat soldiers will begin receiving these new 6.8 mm caliber rifles and automatic rifles in late 2023.
The Army and Microsoft also moved ahead revamping and testing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) this year — a militarized version of the HoloLens 2 heads-up display. However, soldiers continued to experience physical ailments when using the device during operational testing this summer.
As a result, Bush devised a new plan, and as of early December, the Army and Microsoft were working to modify the terms of the existing deal valued up to $21.9 billion over 10 years. If negotiations are a success, the Army’s tentative plan is to field 10,000 initial units of the heads-up display while also working with the company to redesign the form factor.
More specifically, the Army wants to field 5,000 IVAS 1.0 systems to schoolhouses for training and to its Army Recruiting Command. The duo will then work together on several improvements under IVAS 1.1 to include a new low-light camera and on software stability. If these changes are adequate, the Army would acquire 5,000 units and field them to non-light infantry units such as Stryker units.
Then under a IVAS 1.2 umbrella, the service wants to redesign the device, in part, to move away from the helmet-like design and towards something soldiers can put on and take off more easily.
