U.S. Army Spc. Austin Suarez, a truck driver with the New Jersey National Guard’s 250th Brigade Support Battalion, operates a tactical vehicle on Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., Sept. 21, 2020. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Matt Hecht)
WASHINGTON — The Army has selected four teams to participate in the prototyping phase for its coveted $5.1 billion Common Tactical Truck (CTT) contract, but there will be a window for other competitors to jump in before a production contract is awarded, according to the service.
On Jan. 27, the service announced that Mack Defense, Navistar Defense, Oshkosh Defense, and the American Rheinmetall Vehicles/GM Defense team have received Other Transaction Authority agreements “totaling” $24.25 million for the CTT initiative. Each team is now tasked with delivering three CTT prototypes — a M915 Line Haul Tractor and M1088 Medium Tractor, a Palletized Load System (PLS) and Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT).
“This approach allows the Army to modernize at the pace of industry, integrating new technologies as they are developed,” Wolfgang Petermann, the project manager for transportation systems with the Program Executive Office Combat Support & Combat Service (PEO CS&CSS) said in a press release. “Additionally, commonality in the CTT family of vehicles will enable open modular designs and interchangeable repair parts across the fleet, resulting in streamlined supply chains and reduced total lifecycle costs.”
Companies submitted their CTT competition proposals last year based, in part, on their commercially available trucks and technologies with the goal of providing the Army with a vehicle that could “address the increasing age” of its Heavy Tactical Vehicle fleet with a single line of vehicles. Although the service is only asking for the four teams to produce the three prototype variants — the on-road tractor, off-road tractor, and load handling system — they will also provide digital designs of tanker and cargo variants and a wrecker design study, Alvin Bing, the product lead for the program, explained in an August email. He noted that this study is aimed at helping the Army decide if industry is able to build the wrecker variant.
A US Army conceptual rendering for its CTT program. (US Army)
As for the schedule, each team has just over seven months to deliver its three prototypes to the service. Then in 2024, the service will begin evaluating them at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, according to Bing.
“Using the results from the prototype evaluation, the program office, in conjunction with the sustainment requirements community, will present an updated requirements document to the Army Requirements Oversight Council (AROC), with a decision expected in fiscal 2025,” Bing wrote at the time.
If the AROC signs off on the new requirements, it is around this time that the Army plans to conduct another “full and open” competition in FY25 for “production-representative vehicles” based on the updated requirements. After evaluating these trucks, the service intends to downselect to one vendor by the end of FY26.
For now, industry is betting that this will be a big-ticket program for the Army, one that could top more than $5 billion. However, Bing noted that the service has not approved its CTT “Army Acquisition Objective” numbers yet and said that won’t occur until the 2026 timeframe.
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