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Life Can Go On; JLTV Protest Denied

By Colin Clark Thursday, February 19th, 2009 4:10 pm
Posted in International, Land, Policy

The Pentagon’s acquisition community breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Government Accountability Office denied protests to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle Program award by Northrop Grumman and Textron.

If these major program protests had been upheld they might well have brought Pentagon acquisition efforts to a slow and painful grind, even slower and more painful than they already suffer from, according to several senior acquisition officials with whom I’ve spoken over the last several weeks.

The prose from the Joint Light Tactical vehicle program office’s Wednesday afternoon press release was bland. “The Government Accountability Office (GAO), today, denied the protests of Northrop Grumman and Textron Marine & Land Systems against the awards of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) Technology Development (TD) contracts.”

But the prose from some Army sources was vibrant. You could hear — literally — some in the Army whooping it up that the GAO had found in their favor. However, the Army still faces a very fundamental problem, one it shares with the Marines. It does not have a clear and viable vehicle strategy. The J-8 is working on the issue but the budget is being rebuilt as we speak and the two services are buying an insupportable range of vehicles — up-armored Humvees, MRAPs, FCS and JLTVs. And the move to Afghanistan will force purchase of a fairly large quantity of vehicles, leaving the services with less flexibility to make a rational, long-term decision.

The three JLTV technology development contracts at stake had a combined value of only $166 million, but the program could well be worth as much as $40 billion in the long term. And if the GAO had upheld the protests by Northrop Grumman and Textron Marine & Land Systems it would have left acquisition officials wary each time they prepared an RFI or contract award. Major programs such as T-Sat have already suffered from milder version of such paralysis in the wake of the CSAR-X and tanker protests.

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	Cole February 20th, 2009 at 1:06 am FCS will have JLTVs as its HMMWV replacement. They are not part of FCS but are a complementary system. Suspect they will end up in the Airborne and 101st Division, and other active Infantry BCTs (IBCT) as well. You would think they would put the MRAPs in National Guard brigades, both heavy BCTs and IBCTs because those vehicles could work wonders in flood conditions by running above the water and through faster moving water due to heavy weight. They also would be ideal in CBRNE conditions by being well off of radiated soil/roads with fallout dust on them. That need will come sooner than we want. Active heavy divisions could keep MRAPs, too, since they take a long time to deploy anyway. The downside of too many MRAPS/M-ATV is that you lose 2 potential JLTVs for the price of one MRAP. I thought I read we were sending MP armored security vehicles and Strykers to Afghanistan? Won’t that suffice with more anti-IED technology being deployed as well? Claim next-war-itis all you want. But while many Soldiers are saved now by MRAP, not sure a lighter M-ATV will be anywhere near as effective. If we claim the 75% M-ATV solution is sufficient in lieu of JLTV, we risk an equally large number of Soldiers being killed in non-war years by rollovers, and in future wars by ATGMs,future RPGs, 30mm fire, and tank fire due to the MRAPs high profile and inability to hide behind terrain defilade.
	CMSgt BillyD February 26th, 2009 at 8:05 am FCS aside, the truck in the photo will cost like an F-16, and probably be about one tenth as reliable. It looks to me like the bad guys really have the right idea. What about 100,000 Ford F150’s (Satisfied American made at about $40,000 apiece, with a machine gun attached to the bed: This can be done at some Mom and Pop welding shops to create jobs) and thousands of RPGs (Heck, we can buy these from the Russians and Chinese, everyone else does). The bad guys have been kicking our butts with out dated technology, but have figured more is better. Why do we have a vehicle being designed and built by a contractor who doesn’t build vehicles???????
	gotarmadillo February 27th, 2009 at 7:26 am Right on, CMSgt Billy D!!! Or, can we get the JLTV with the Cadillac big fins and more chrome? How about a rocket motor and periscope so we’ll a “real” ATV???? One JLTV equals how many RPG 7s??
	pv2 manning February 27th, 2009 at 9:45 pm Soldiers lives dont have a price tag attached, honestly billyd. ied’s are the main cause of death in theater, we need a v hulled vehicle to replace the humv. honestly mom ‚pop, and the ford motor company can go bankrupt and move into a homeless shelter for all i care. all i know is when i am rolling down the road i dont want a old motar round with a cellphone taped to it to make my wife 4 hundred grand richer.neither do i want the families of other soldiers to experience the excrutiating pain of losing a loved one. yah death happens, its war after all. but we have the technology and money to protect our warfighters. its the least we can do. by your idea i question if you were ever in the military. and last time i checked the “bad guys” were being reduced to red peices of meat by our increadibly deadly and sophisticated weapons systems at a peicemeal rate. hate to break to you bud but katie couric and brian williams dont really have a clue about the realities of iraq and aghan. so if they are who your basing your opinions on you need a new news source
	Militor February 28th, 2009 at 4:06 pm Why all the attention from aerospace/Jet Fighter Plane producers to build Vehicles? Why not just admit it? The way this whole process was handled from beginning to end was cheesy. The design was connected to production. So if you could not produce 60 or 100 in a month. You could not summit a design. Unless you wanted to give it to someone else to build. So who could have a work force standing by just in case you get a contract? Only a few companies could do that. Then, the contractors like Lockheed and BAE had/have people inside the procurement system to lend a professional review of ideas/designs. I am guessing Grumman/Textron did not get the chance to see other people designs, before others had seen their designs. So when second tier contractors submit their work. Design elements even get borrowed from the privies. The whole AMC& FAR regs. look like they were written by GM or BAE. Like needing a top secret clearance to submit your own design. For what? .50 cal.BMG protection. Which the MRAPS and JLTVS don’t and won’t have. Plus, the $450,000.00 price tag. WHY? It is just a truck. Not a house! You could buy a whole Afghan Village for that. Or buy food for thousands of Iraqis for months. Instead of driving around in a BBQ/Microwave. The JLTVs don’t swim. Don’t reconfigure well. They have limited firepower. Limited recon value. Small payload areas. The project started years ago. The designs are stale now. It’s another corporate welfare effort. Not to mention, it was stalled on purpose to try to help GM get involved. But they just couldn’t pull it off. It’s not surprising the big boys ended up with the prizes. Quite predictable. The message here. “Unless your ready to loose millions on R&D? Don’t play!” Like Bantam inventing the JEEP. And they got payed $46,000.00 for their work. Others who had nothing to do with the design used it to make millions. By the way. A fellow from GM ran the office that allocated war contracts in ww11. It’s kinda like that now. It’s settled before it’s started. Plus the work is sent around different states. To get the most benefit politically. No matter how much that drives up costs. Why not increase benefits to the solders and their families. Or just provide clean water for some more people? But you can see where the priorities are. It’s like the contractors run everything. In all ways! Burn in HELL TARDEC. “Solders First?” Not in this decade. Plus TARDEC tried to steal my design. With a security program from MIT. Nice people at AMC. What have you done in the last twenty years? Armored HUMVEE? The company that had that contract. Tried to sue everyone else for making armor to fit their vehicles. “No don’t make armor for the HUMVEE, only we ca do that”. Contractors. Pay to play mentality.
	Ripper80 March 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 am Some of you need to stick to what you know, and vehicles and airplanes aren’t part of it. The JLTV has VEHICLE contractors building the vehicle and others who will provide whatever other equipment is needed. As a CMSgt, you must have any you are responsible for. The reason for the high cost is the surviability in the event of an IED or some similar device. The intent is to let the soldier survive. Hope … YOU will understand that we don’t throw away lives. Either you are not in the service and are a wannabe, or some pretty stupid people promoted you. So, stick to what you are good at…
	Rhyno327 March 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm The comments iam reading make this sound like a bad idea. Has anyone seen wat the S. African military uses? Nearly all thier vehicles are V shaped and mine resistant. Where does the weapons go to defend this truck? $500,000 too? Wow, that is a bit expensive.