Race for Lighter MRAP Heating Up
Aviation Week's DTI Bettina H. Chavanne January 10, 2009This article first appeared in AviationWeek.com.
Competitors for the U.S. military's Multipurpose All-Terrain Vehicle (MATV) have a Jan. 12 deadline to submit proposals, ushering in a new generation of vehicles sporting all the survivability of an Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle without MRAP-like bulk.
Navistar Defense remained mum about its proposal. President and CEO Archie Massicotte told Aviation Week only that the company is "locked and loaded" on the two prototype vehicles due Feb. 23. The company hopes its experience in the MRAP market will give it an edge in the MATV competition. Since May 2007, Navistar has been awarded $3 billion in Defense Department contracts for its MaxxPro MRAP variants.
"You don't just take a commercial truck, paint it green and say it's military," Massicotte said. "Every truck has its own recipe."
Indeed, with MRAP production winding down, companies are looking at creative ways of supporting subsequent generations of manned ground vehicles. Tony Russell, vice president of vehicle armor at BAE, which has supplied more than 5,000 MRAPs to the Army and Marine Corps since the Iraq war made them critical equipment, sees one of the challenges of the future being the sustainment of the relatively expensive MRAP fleet (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 7).
The first MATV unit is slated to be fielded in fall 2009. Although the government expects to order only about 2,080 vehicles, it has specified a minimum of three test articles and maximum program of 10,000 vehicles in its solicitation notice.
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