Oshkosh Wins M-ATV Award; Company to 'Talk To Potential Partners' 

June 2009
By Marjorie Censer

June 30, 2009 -- The Army today awarded Oshkosh a nearly $1.1 billion contract for 2,244 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicles, capping a roughly seven-month process to buy lighter MRAPs for Afghanistan.

A top company official told Inside the Army today that the company can handle the contract by itself but will talk to other companies about possible teaming arrangements.

The Pentagon announced that the contract award would buy the vehicles along with “Basic Issue Items, Field Service Representative Support, Equipment, Engineering, Authorized Stocking List Parts Packages and Prescribed Load List parts packages.”

The M-ATV version produced by Oshkosh was selected from a group including four other competitors: Navistar, BAE Systems and Force Dynamics -- a Force Protection and General Dynamics Land Systems team. BAE submitted two vehicles.

The award had been highly anticipated because of potential growth in the contract size as well as speculation that the selection could serve as a clue or provide an advantage in the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle effort. That initiative, now under way, is designed to provide a next-generation humvee.

Robert Bohn, chairman and CEO of Oshkosh, today credited the independent suspension system used in the Oshkosh M-ATV with helping the company win the contract.

Oshkosh's TAK-4 Independent Suspension Kits have been installed on many of the existing MRAPs to adapt them to Afghanistan’s terrain. The suspension is also used on the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement used by the Marine Corps.

“Really what makes this vehicle is the suspension, because as we know in Afghanistan they don't have the infrastructure that we see in other parts of the world,” Bohn told ITA after learning of the award.

Earlier this month, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, program executive officer for MRAP, met with representatives from each of the competing companies and asked each -- if selected -- to consider working with the competitors to ensure the delivery requirements can be met.

Bohn told ITA today that Oshkosh has the capability to meet the delivery requirements without assistance but said he has directed his staff to “talk to potential partners that may have an interest in this program.”

Oshkosh partnered with Plasan to provide the M-ATV armor system, according to an Oshkosh statement released today.

The M-ATV request for proposals was released in early December in response to a joint urgent operational needs statement out of Afghanistan. The RFP called for “effective force protection and mobility performance for off-road missions.”

“Under this best-value M-ATV acquisition, offerors must maximize both protection levels and off-road mobility attributes and balance the effects of size and weight in support of stated requirements,” the document said.

Written proposals were due in January, and competitors were required to deliver production-representative vehicles to Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, in February.

In late March, Navistar filed a protest in the competition, citing a “technicality” in the evaluation of the program. The company withdrew its protest after the Army and Marine Corps quickly amended the request for proposals to clarify the definitions of “hull” and “hull breach.”

Citing “the Government-recognized ambiguity” of the phrases, the amendment said the new definitions of hull and hull breach would “not apply to Government testing conducted prior to [indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity] award and [would] not form the basis to immediately reject an Offeror.”

The change indicated that any previous testing that raised red flags in the hull breach area would not be counted against competitors.

At the end of April, the military awarded contracts for additional production-representative vehicles to BAE Systems, Oshkosh, Navistar and Force Dynamics. Those vehicles were then delivered to Aberdeen days later to undergo additional testing.

The program received a significant boost just weeks ago when the powerful Joint Requirements Oversight Council approved a major expansion of the military’s requirement for M-ATVs. The JROC set the figure at 5,244, as first reported by InsideDefense.com June 4. The RFP had said 2,080 was the objective number, though it had indicated the program could grow to include as many as 10,000 vehicles. -- Marjorie Censer