Upgunned Stryker’s software problems ‘resolved,’ says Army two-star

WASHINGTON — Software problems hampering the Army’s new upgunned Stryker vehicle have been fixed, and late next year soldiers will begin receiving the eight-wheel-drive armored vehicle outfitted a 30mm cannon, a two-star general told Breaking Defense.

“We’ve resolved the kind of software-driven issues,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems, said during a Dec. 1 interview.

When the Army picked the Oshkosh Defense team for its Medium Caliber Weapon System (MCWS) program in mid-2021 over General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) and Leonardo DRS, it already knew there were problems with the winning bid sample’s ability to mark targets and hit them while on the move. Then shortly after that award, the service disclosed it would proceed with a “risk management testing” effort to make sure the Double V–Hull A1 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicles receiving the customized Rafael Samson turret would operate as planned.

“We thought we’d had an accuracy problem. … That turned out to be really a data problem, not an actual physical problem. But there were a number of software related things associated with control and stabilization,” Dean said.

Given the challenges, the Army decided to pause testing earlier this year and provided the company with time to make changes, explained Oshkosh’s Chief Programs Officer Pat Williams.

“Within weeks of the decision to delay test, we returned to test with the government to validate system performance which resulted in a decision to restart testing in August 2023,” Williams wrote in a short statement to Breaking Defense today.

Once testing resumed in August, it proved that those fixes were adequate, and testing since that point has been going “very, very well,” according to Dean. The service, he added, is now accepting production vehicles with plans to re-enter operational testing in May 2024, a key test event designed to help determine if the weapon is safe and effective for soldiers to use on the battlefield.

However, that new schedule means the Army will not meet its previously anticipated goal of having the first unit equipped with the upgunned Strykers by the end of the year and is now aiming to hit that target in the late-September to mid-December timeframe.

Although this is a nine-month-to-one-year fielding delay, the two-star general said the technical delay only accounted for a “couple” of months while the remaining chunk of time involved realigning various schedules to include identifying an Army unit available for testing.

When it comes to the Army’s acquisition plan, Dean said the service still plans to field three Stryker brigades’ worth of upgunned vehicles and has not allocated additional dollars to buy up to six brigades with, an option that has been previously floated.

As Dean and his team gear up to field the upgraded vehicle under a program of record, it is not the first-time soldiers will receive Strykers with 30mm guns. Back in 2017, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Germany received the Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle – Dragoon to fulfill an urgent-need request. That vehicle was produced by GDLS and included a Kongsberg turret.

That fielding paved the way for the MCWS competition where GDLS submitted a bid sample with a Kongsberg turret. But according to one source-selection document, the Army conceded that while another vendor provided multiple “technical advantages” over the winner, Oshkosh’s bid of $551.6 million to outfit three brigades, or roughly 249 vehicles, tipped the source-selection scale because it was roughly $200 million cheaper than that other bid.