Home » International » Army Goofed On FMTV Award

Army Goofed On FMTV Award

By Colin Clark Monday, December 14th, 2009 11:48 am
Posted in International, Land, Policy

UPDATED: Army Leaders “Reviewing” GAO Decisions and BAE Comments On Unique Cab Design

In yet another strike at the heart of the Defense Department’s acquisition system, the Government Accountability Office issued a ruling today that the Army made fundamental mistakes when it awarded the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) contract to Oshkosh.

In the words of one analyst who closely watched this $3 billion competition, “the Army conducted an incomplete, unprofessional review of the proposals from BAE Systems, Oshkosh and Navistar. First, it wrongly stated that all three offerors had equal, excellent production capabilities. Then, on that basis, it picked the winner solely on the basis of price, without a rigorous test as to the realism of Oshkosh’s very low bid. So a company that has never built the product beat the incumbent by bidding 30 percent below the current asking price — on a build-to-print contract! This is the sort of travesty the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act was passed to prevent,” said Loren Thompson, defense consultant and analyst at the Lexington Institute.

BAE, incumbent maker of the FMTV, argued publicly that Oshkosh did not possess the expertise or experience to build the FMTV without a high degree of risk to the taxpayer. In particular, BAE pointed to its patented cab design, which allows the addition of armor when needed, as a capability Oshkosh lacked and would have to reinvent or license from BAE. The protestors also argued that Oshkosh’s bid price– 30 percent lower than theirs — was unsustainable.

“We are confident that our skilled and experienced workforce in Texas and Michigan will put us in the very best position to compete successfully for continued FMTV production, especially since the new Long-Term Armor Strategy cab is our design. Our current bridge takes production through 2010, but decisions need to be made by this spring to sustain uninterrupted FMTV production into 2011. Our workforce remains focused and committed to providing our men and women in uniform with the world’s safest, most reliable medium tactical vehicles,” Dennis Morris, president of BAE Systems Global Tactical Systems, said in a Monday statement.

GAO agreed that the Army got the evaluation wrong. “Our review of the record led us to conclude that the Army’s evaluation was flawed with regard to the evaluation of Oshkosh’s proposal under the capability evaluation factor, and the evaluation of Navistar’s past performance,” said Michael Golden, GAO’s managing associate general counsel for procurement law. But GAO did not agree with the protestors on price. “We also denied a number of Navistar’s and BAE’s challenges to the award to Oshkosh, including challenges to the evaluation of Oshkosh’s price,” Golden said in his statement.

GAO “recommended” that the Army reevaluate the proposals in terms of capabilities and conduct a new evaluation of “Navistar’s past performance that adequately documents the agency’s judgments; and make a new selection decision.”

After that, if “Oshkosh is not found to offer the best value, the agency should terminate Oshkosh’s contract for the convenience of the government.” BAE and Navistar should be reimbursed the substantial costs of their protests. The Army has 60 days to inform GAO of its actions.

Army spokesman Maj. Jimmie Cummings said the service was “aware of the GAO’s recommendations and Army leaders are reviewing them at this time.”

Following is the GAO’s press statement:

DECISION ON BID PROTEST BY NAVISTAR DEFENSE AND BAE SYSTEMS REGARDING ARMY TRUCK AWARD TO OSHKOSH

WASHINGTON, D.C. (December 14, 2009) – The following is a statement by Michael R. Golden, GAO’s managing associate general counsel for procurement law, regarding the bid protest decision resolving the family of medium tactical vehicles protest by Navistar Defense, LLC and BAE Systems, Tactical Vehicle Systems LP, B-401865 et al., December 14,
2009

“Our Office sustained, or upheld, the protests today. Our review of the record led us to conclude that the Army’s evaluation was flawed with regard to the evaluation of Oshkosh’s proposal under the capability evaluation factor, and the evaluation of Navistar’s past performance. We therefore sustained Navistar’s and BAE’s protests.
We also denied a number of Navistar’s and BAE’s challenges to the award to Oshkosh, including challenges to the evaluation of Oshkosh’s price.

We recommended that the Army: reevaluate the offerors’ proposals under the capability evaluation factor, in a manner consistent with the terms of the solicitation; conduct a new evaluation of Navistar’s past performance that adequately documents the agency’s judgments; and make a new selection decision. We also recommended that if, at the conclusion of the reevaluation, Oshkosh is not found to offer the best value, the agency should terminate Oshkosh’s contract for the convenience of the government. We further recommend that Navistar and BAE be reimbursed the costs of filing and pursuing the successful grounds of their protests related to their challenge of technical and past performance evaluation issues, including reasonable attorney fees.
By statute, the Army has 60 days to inform our Office of its actions in response to our recommendations.

Navistar Defense, LLC, of Warrenville, Illinois, and BAE Systems, Tactical Vehicle Systems LP, of Sealy, Texas, protested the award of a contract to Oshkosh Corporation, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, under request for proposals (RFP) No. W56HZV-09-R-0083, issued by the Department of the Army, U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, for production of the family of medium tactical vehicles (FMTV). Navistar and BAE challenged the Army’s evaluation of the offerors’ technical and price proposals, and contend that the selection decision was flawed.

The Army received proposals and conducted negotiations with Oshkosh, Navistar, and BAE. The agency selected Oshkosh’s proposal for award on August 26, 2009, and Navistar and BAE each filed a protest with our Office on September 4 and 5, respectively, with each supplementing its protest several times thereafter. In accordance with our Bid Protest Regulations, we obtained a report from the agency and comments on that report from Oshkosh, Navistar, and BAE. Our Office also conducted a hearing on November 9 and 10, at which testimony was received from a number of Army witnesses about the record. Following the hearing, we received further comments from the parties, addressing the hearing testimony as well as other aspects of the record.

Our decision should not be read to reflect a view as to the merits of the firms’ respective approaches to produce the FMTV. Judgments about which offeror will most successfully meet governmental needs are largely reserved for the procuring agencies, subject only to such statutory and regulatory requirements as full and open competition and fairness to potential offerors. Our bid protest process examines whether procuring agencies have complied with those requirements.

The decision was issued under a protective order because the decision contains proprietary and source selection sensitive information. We have directed counsel for the parties to promptly identify information that cannot be publicly released so that we can expeditiously prepare and release, as soon as possible, a public version of the decision.”

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	William C. December 14th, 2009 at 5:59 pm Like I said, things are pretty ****ed up when we can’t buy a truck right.
	Byron Skinner December 14th, 2009 at 5:40 pm Good Afternoon Folks, This is called in the trade monkey wrenching and it drags out projects for years and increases cost while the losers whine, protest, go to court and say they were wronged and in most cases such as this it is just bull sh**. I noticed one part of interest not mentioned in all this and it the Soldiers and marines in Afghanistan who are waiting for these vehicles. But again there live don’t mean a thing when your talking corporate profits. All this is doing is keeping new companies from entering the bidding pool for DoD contracts and protects the collusion and low ball bidding that takes place from the inbred contractors that drive prices up. A solution to this problem would be that any company that protests a bid and loses will be dropped off the DoD bid list for five years the first time and ten years the second time. Since the overwhelming majority are found to be without justification that may slow this down a tad bit. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	flamethrower1 December 14th, 2009 at 10:59 pm I am pretty sure Oshkosh can build the truck that they bid for. They do it day in and day out.
	RFL December 15th, 2009 at 1:32 am If the GAO was this powerful after Dec 7 1941 I am sure the war would have never been waged
	A. Nonymous December 15th, 2009 at 2:02 am Byron, How exactly does low ball bidding drive the price up, especially on a firm-fixed price, build to print contract? If Oshkosh underbid, the only losers will be the Oshkosh stockholders.
	Bobby December 15th, 2009 at 3:09 am I dont think he meant that Oshkosh is driving up the prices. It is the constant legal protesting by the Bid losers that are driving up procurement costs and delaying fielding of needed equipment. There are lots of examples of this. I do not think the AF will ever award another contract that will not be protested by NG, Boeing or Lockheed unless the rules on procurement are changed and or the rules on protesting are changed. Occasionally they are appropriate but it seems 1 out of 10 are complete shenanigans.
	Daniel Russ December 15th, 2009 at 3:37 am The GAO is often the last best hope for accountability in US contracts. Yes Mr. Skinner, the loser protests drag the process out, but that’s not the GAO’s problem. That’s the problem of our legal system which takes for friggin’ ever to parse out the fairness we all hope for and count on in order not to be hoodwinked into buying crap for a lot of money. I don’t know if Oshkosh can do the job. I will assume for arguments sake that they can indeed do this well. I also know that our procurement system if rife with examples of low bidders winning contracts and then when the rubber meets the road, in other words, when the train has left the station and the contract has been awarded they produce a less than exemplary product. Yes it’s a problem. But don’t blame the GAO. Blame the process. Respectfully, Daniel Russ Civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com
	Byron Skinner December 14th, 2009 at 11:16 pm Good Evening Folks, For A. Nonymous; Easy answer. The bid for any Government is spelled out in a project manual. In the case of this bid I would think that it several manuals along with a book of drawings. The bid instruction tell the bidder to only bid what is in the manual even if there is a difference with the drawings. A project this size I’m sure that there are several hundred or even thousands of discrepancies between manual and drawings. The reason for this is that the writing of the manual (I know 75% or more of it is boiler plate), the publishing and posting of notices takes time, meanwhile the engineers are still finishing the drawings. This time lag to posting the bid can be months. Often the winner of the bid is the bidder who can find the most differences between the project manual and drawings. (oh, you wanted a steering wheel. where is it in the manual?, oops, don’t laugh this type of error happens all the time) I have seen bids of over $5 million dollars that were bided by three or four contractors and the differed for high to low by less then a $100.00. Thats why estimators for these projects are paid very well. Then something called change orders come in. Typically a change order will be billed cost, plus overhead(?) and 10% profit (that is determined by dividing the cost/overhead sum by .9). The profit is a contract such as this size is nearly all in the change orders. Most contracts of this size are bid at between 2.5–5% net profit, but if there is a lot of big change orders that will come down, and since this project is using new and emerging/developing technologies there is bound to be a lot of change orders, then many contractors will actually take their cost numbers and shave off 2.5–7%. To get the bid. Thats called low balling and it’s perfectly legal. This contract was put out during the last administration. There were 39 contractors who were working in the procurement and acquisition along with at least a dozen contracted advisors (mostly retire military working for conservative think tanks) in the Bush DoD. To say that there were a lot of under the table deals and considerations going on would probably be an vast understatement. The uniforms were for the most part on the side lines. Normally on a DoD bit there is a protest period of 30 days and there are strict rules about what can be challenged in a bid. But of course this was the era of Bush (43) so most likely there were clauses in the contract that permit the lawyers to get in much later. The statement at the end about of Colin’s post; “…proprietary and source selection sensitive information.” is a give away that there is extra bid activity going on here. The think tanks who are up to their, what ever smell is all over this. What will happen, the Dod will find problems with the bid system, pay up to the losers who want to get their estimated profits out of the job and some Lt. Colonel or Colonel will be asked to retire. Another legacy of the Reagan era privateization of the DoD. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	Curt December 15th, 2009 at 4:19 am couple things to note here. First, unlike in the KC-X competition, the GAO did not indicate there was a flaw in the determination (ie, using criteria that wasn’t part of the solicitation or in at least one case inadvertently switching performance numbers between proposals), merely that there was insufficient justification to substantiate an evaluation of all parties being judged equally in capability and past performance. Oshkosh’s price quote was sustained and often left out is that BAEs bid was 22pct lower than the previous 5 year contract as well so Oshkosh’s bid was right around 10pct less than BAE’s, not 30pct. Second, there are a few basic problems with Loren Thompson’s arguments (his complete analysis is over on the Lexington Institute). – He complains that all three contractors are graded equally in past performance. His basic argument, and BAEs, has been that BAE designed the truck, has made the truck for over a decade, and won the most previous 5 year contract to manufacture the truck. He completely ignores the fact that Oshkosh makes all the USMCs medium trucks as well as all of the Army’s heavy trucks. In both cases, Oshkosh beat out BAE for the contracts, so it is likely that they can build trucks. It also ignores thet Navistar has built numerous military trucks, most recently for Iraq (as well as civilian trucks), so you can probably assume that they can capably build trucks too. The whole point of the contract is to open bidding to other companies who can do the work, and the evaluation is not based on how well they built FMTVs but how well they did on other contracts in the past. Both Oshkosh and Navistar have performed well on numerous contracts. – The armoured cab issue is also somewhat spurious as both Oshkosh and Navistar have designed and built MRAPs and, at least in the case of Oshkosh, a complete modular armored cab for their heavy trucks that meet the same requirements as the BAE trucks. So they can both do the work. Assuming the Army acted in good faith the first time and has the supporting documentation, the re-evaluation could be over fairly quickly. Of course I won’t hold my breath.
	tom December 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm ONE PART of that answer is that the US Government — and most especially the DoD — has never really held any contractor to a “firm fixed price” contract. If some local garage offered to sell you new vehicles identical to a Chevy Tahoe for half the price that GM changes its dealers, it might sound like a good deal; but how many of those trucks would you expect to actually receive at that price? Even when the government tries to play hardball on a “firm fixed price” contract, that firm fixed price always goes up because the government ALWAYS changes what it wants. If we were holding Oshkosh to a firm fixed price on the LMTV it wouldn’t be very long before someone decided that the Army needed to have the trucks come in a different color or with LED taillights or some other trivial change — which would require negotiating a new price.
	Eggshen December 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm Thank you all for clearing this up for me. I read the AP article first and proceded to bitch and moan about the lack of any relevant detail. I can always count on Byron and guys like Curt to get me up to speed.
	Smokemifyougotem December 15th, 2009 at 8:29 am Comment to A. Nonymous: You’ve obviously never heard of that old industry ‘trick’ to raise the cost of a firm fixed contract called Change Order to that take advantage of the government’s constant desire to get something more than what they originally asked for AFTER the contract is let.
	drb December 15th, 2009 at 3:24 pm I work on the RG31’S made by bae and they suck
	ron December 15th, 2009 at 5:25 pm I guess Oshkosh has a greater lobby than the GAO.
	Byron Skinner December 15th, 2009 at 1:09 pm Good Morning Folks, Just to add to this, in todays WSJ on page B-9, there is an article by August Cole; “Oshkosh Army Contract Endangered by Review”. I will note that the same company that owns FOX also owns the WSJ. A quote from Mr. Cole story kinda sums it up; “The GAO made clear it’s decision covered the contracting process, and wasn’t an indicator of which company would make the better truck.” When building weapons platforms should it not be about getting the best we can? The capitalist system has a winner and everyone else is a loser, that is of course in getting contracts from the DoD. This is a Reagan era legacy. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	Byron Skinner December 15th, 2009 at 2:11 pm Good Morning Folks, Here is something where the Army made the right call, the FCS cancelation. This was an issue that last March was hotly debated over a couple of weekend over on the sister site dt. One of the arguments that I advance was that the UGV was coming along and would make the vehicles of the FCS obsolete very quickly, one that one of the Platforms that I mentioned was “The Rip-Saw” a most unlikely vehicle build by the Hawe brothers who did the inventing in a garage in Maine. Of course this drew laughs from the the experts and paid supporters of big military and the corrupt Military Industrial complex that said only it can develop weapon platforms. Well you as may have already guessed the Hawe Brothers are now H&H Industries, and have written their own Mil. Specs. “The Rip-Saw Military Specifications” that is now in it’s second revision. The Rip-Saw 2 is a 4.5 ton tracked UGV, that will is currently controlled form an M-113, a geriatric platform from the 1950’s, and is currently in test and evaluation by the Army. The Rip-Saw2 can carry a weapons load of 2,000 lbs, has been weapon certified so far for the M-240, M2HB and the Javelin ATM, I wouldn’t be surprised that the Bushmaster II or III wouldn’t be in the Rip-Saw 2’s future. The vehicle has a 600 HP 6.6 liter engine, and can do 0–50 in 5.5 Sec. The Army testers have commented on the Rip-Saws combat durability, now it can take a hit from an IED, it ease of repair in the field and its agility. It is expected that the Rip-Saw could be seeing use in Afghanistan as soon as the third quarter of 2010. If the Army would have gone with the Boeing/SAIC FCS the first vehicles wouldn’t have been ready till 2020, and I’m sure the Rip-Saw 1 that was developed into a working model for less the a million dollar in that garage in Maine will be a lot cheaper then any thing Boeing was going to put out. Good call Sec. od Defense Gates, Admiral Mullen and U.S.M.C. General Cartwright. You saved the Tax Payers $90 billion. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	Byron Skinner December 15th, 2009 at 2:12 pm Good Morning Folks, Here is something where the Army made the right call, the FCS cancelation. This was an issue that last March was hotly debated over a couple of weekend over on the sister site dt. One of the arguments that I advance was that the UGV was coming along and would make the vehicles of the FCS obsolete very quickly, one that one of the Platforms that I mentioned was “The Rip-Saw” a most unlikely vehicle build by the Hawe brothers who did the inventing in a garage in Maine. Of course this drew laughs from the the experts and paid supporters of big military and the corrupt Military Industrial complex that said only it can develop weapon platforms. Well you as may have already guessed the Hawe Brothers are now H&H Industries, and have written their own Mil. Specs. “The Rip-Saw Military Specifications” that is now in it’s second revision. The Rip-Saw 2 is a 4.5 ton tracked UGV, that will is currently controlled form an M-113, a geriatric platform from the 1950’s, and is currently in test and evaluation by the Army. The Rip-Saw2 can carry a weapons load of 2,000 lbs, has been weapon certified so far for the M-240, M2HB and the Javelin ATM, I wouldn’t be surprised that the Bushmaster II or III wouldn’t be in the Rip-Saw 2’s future. The vehicle has a 600 HP 6.6 liter engine, and can do 0–50 in 5.5 Sec. The Army testers have commented on the Rip-Saws combat durability, now it can take a hit from an IED, it ease of repair in the field and its agility. It is expected that the Rip-Saw could be seeing use in Afghanistan as soon as the third quarter of 2010. If the Army would have gone with the Boeing/SAIC FCS the first vehicles wouldn’t have been ready till 2020, and I’m sure the Rip-Saw 1 that was developed into a working model for less the a million dollar in that garage in Maine will be a lot cheaper then any thing Boeing was going to put out. Good call Sec. of Defense Gates, Admiral Mullen and U.S.M.C. General Cartwright. You saved the Tax Payers $90 billion. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	BereavedMil December 15th, 2009 at 7:41 pm And you’ll be costing the taxpayers more and more and more.….so the taxpayers are about to thank you, personally…
	BereavedMil December 15th, 2009 at 7:42 pm And you think ALL the deserters move to Canada, didn’t you?
	Joe M. Ernst December 15th, 2009 at 9:37 pm New Information
	Andrew Wright December 15th, 2009 at 9:54 pm I recently returned from Iraq after a year long deployment conducting convoy ops for the Army. The FMTVs the Army uses are marginal. I did admire the Marine Corps Mk. 25 Cargo Trucks built by OshGosh and wish the Army would take a close look at them.
	Charlie December 15th, 2009 at 10:34 pm “Firm Fixed Price” is usually actually enforced, until or unless the military makes changes, or other factors, such as military specified or supplied parts that cannot be used, military approved vendors for parts have problems, and so forth. I’ve seen T&M (time and materials) contracts for things that should be fixed price, and fixed price that should be T&M. Retired Loggie, among other things. On the other hand, when there is a large difference in price, something is usually wrong.
	Charlie December 15th, 2009 at 10:49 pm “…proprietary and source selection sensitive information.“ I used to hate that phrase. What it can mean is that the contractor does not supply enough information to allow the military to buy parts, etc. from other than the original contractor. When the contractor goes away, or is no longer interested in producing the spare parts, someone has to re-engineer, and obtain approval to make the replacement. This is an expensive and time consuming effort. An example is obtaining radiation hardened electronic components. The same technology and production resources are used to produce “high volume” consumer parts. It is not cost effective for a Mfr. to shut down a high volume line, and set it up to make a few hundred mil spec radiation hardened devices for the military, let alone the fact that the production facilities are virtually all overseas. To actually have this done, the military may pay very large setup fees, as well as compensating the Mfr. for the loss of revenue that occurred as a result of shutting down the high volume production. Retired Loggie
	Charlie December 15th, 2009 at 11:08 pm What I will say is that the military too often awards on the basis of “Lowest Bid” coupled with “Meets Minimum Requirements”, instead of “Meets and Exceeds Minimum Requirements” at a reasonable price. One project involving replacement of a very old airborne system display that I remember had a price “goal” of the new cost of the obsolete display (It was state of the art in it’s time, and thus was not cheap to begin with. The winning bidder submitted a bid (and won) based upon modification and upgrade of a system they built for another branch on the military. The system met minimum specs (more or less) The system favored by military engineering and logistics cost about 25% more, and was fully upgradeable as technology changed. It did not win, based on cost, and the supposed “risk” since it was a totally new design, using “off the shelf” assemblies and components. The end result was that the winning vendor’s unit had a power supply that had a high failure rate, causing additional delay and expense, and eventually re design and replacement of the power supply. The system favored by military engineering and logistics would have been of less cost, higher reliability and capability when everything was said and done.
	MP5sps1 December 16th, 2009 at 3:06 am Oshkosh has been awarded defense contracts before in fact the Sec. of defense was just there on an eval tour they are a great company. They are a US company, they have come in ahead of schedule and under budget. they make a phenominal product ” Just ask the NYFD whom they not only built but donated FD trucks to get them up and running and asking their customers to hold off to they could bring NY back up to statue quoe.
	Byron Skinner December 15th, 2009 at 10:24 pm Good Evening Charlie, Often the Government will specify a component, such as most likely in this case the power plant. The Army might want a commercial engine that has a proven record and will have parts availability for many years. In that case most likely they will say in the project manual “Government Provides”. The “…source selection…” might mean that the contractor after the bid is awarded might make a change of equal or better for a part/parts. This is permitted with the approval of the project manager, who is the controlling agent for the Government. The reason can be to reduce cost, the Government will expect a credit of course, or to use a better suited part then the part specified by the Government, or what is requested is no longer available, this often happens with the lag time in biding a project, or there is a technological revision in the alternate part that was unknown at the time the project manual was written that is better suited to the project. Playing around with the above can create a lot of change orders and additional profits. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	Byron Skinner December 15th, 2009 at 10:34 pm Good Evening Charlie, This doesn’t appear to be a T&M job but a Design and Build contract since from the limited information the Oshkosh product was different from what either BAE or Navistar was offering. In that case the selection almost by definition is purely suggestive, on the part of the Government and the lowest bid doesn’t have to be considered if the customer determines that one of the products is clearly superior for any reason to the others. The statement by Andrew Wright above may have been heard loud and clear and the Army had QA in mind as well as design and time to construct. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	Steve White December 16th, 2009 at 8:34 am Byron, A trust you rememeber it was Bill Clinton’s adminstration that first awarded FMTV to S&S. So blame Bill and his crew for starting this in the first place, or otherwise congratulate George W. for opening it up to competition. You can’t have your cake and eat it!.
	CLYDE December 16th, 2009 at 6:33 pm oshkosh is building the plant now for this truck bae sucks all of there mraps have oshkosh axles on them they cant build a good truck and oshkosh has won this contract its a done deal
	Byron Skinner December 16th, 2009 at 2:50 pm Good Morning Steve White, No lover of the Clintons here. sorry Steve, either Bill or Hillary. Never voted for Clinton and disapproved of most of what he did as President. I find it quite appropriate hat he was “adopted” by the Bush family. In fact one could put up a good argument that Clinton was a better Republican President then either of the Bushs. Being a Liberal I would have to say that the last Liberal President we had, was Richard Nixon. Before you go into fits of laughter and convulsions Steve, look at Nixon’s records of domestic and foreign policy achievements. Watergate and the Southern strategy and his bungling of the Vietnam War were also part of Nixon and History will rightfully hold him accountable, but under Nixon a workable Welfare Program for Urban America, he called it “Revenue Sharing” to fool the simple minded knuckle heads in the Republican Party, was put in effect, only to be scuttled by Reagan, Nixon filled out the LBJ Great Society, promoted the use of food stamps and nutrition aid to the poor, expanded Medicare, finished ingratiating primary and secondary education, and a lot of other stuff that his name has yet to be attached to. On foreign policy he opened up China to the west, he deal with the Soviet Union at the height of its power, he pushed Europe toward the EU to name just the big thing he did. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	DoDC4ISR December 16th, 2009 at 9:38 pm To MP5sps1, Oshkosh oursources most of their production and all parts. Trust me, I know. Although they are a US company, so is Navistar, they use the Israeli armor company Plasan Sasa to do all of their armor. In fact all of the USMC vehicles produced by Oshkosh use Israeli armor. The M-ATV by Oshkosh uses israeli armor. How about giving preferential treatment or consideration to Prime Contractors who use US suppliers for higher tier components. Oshkosh is glued with Plasan. I hope they loose the FMTV bid and hope they start using US companies who make the same quality parts as foreign companies. This way US small businesses can pull through this tough economic time.
	NC_Witchypoo December 16th, 2009 at 10:02 pm The truly awful thing is that currently the military only is outfitting its vehicles to withstand all threats for one of every 4 vehicles. I don’t know about you, but I would want to ride in the 1 that’s armored up. A friend of mine in Afghanistan says it’s so bad that some of the troops feel safer WALKING! The army should rigorously test each vehicle it bids on to make sure they are getting the BEST for the money. Sounds as if in this case the bean counters dropped the ball again.
	R. Smith - ILS December 17th, 2009 at 1:00 pm I would guess that pricing might have been a little more competitive if it were bid by the “original” manufacturer prior to being bought by BAE (along with its increased overhead).
	BOOMER December 17th, 2009 at 10:19 am The problem with all of this is the generals and engineers dont listen to the guys on the front lines, plus they take so long to get things rolling that they are outdated by the time it hits the field. These anti I.E.D. vehicles are getting so big, heavy and slow that they are now easier targets. fact is the more armor you put on them, the more explosives the enemy will bring to destroy them. I.E.D.‘s went from being small mines to 500 and 1,000 lb bombs being used because first we told the bad guys we were going to put armor on everything and second because they adapted to the threat just as we trained them to do in the 80’s. I liked the original concept of the ripsaw as a manned vehicle, but lost intreast when I saw one at Picatinny arsenal that was remote operated and mounted with an M240 LMG. It can still be put down in the field, a joystick cammando cannot see everything going on or read the terrain like a soldier can, once you disable that robot you either have to self detonate it or loose all of its cargo to the bad guys. If they would just increase helo’s and go air mobile then convoy & I.E.D isuues would disappear. If they make faster and lighter all terrain vehicles, then they could drive away from roads avoiding I.E.D.s altogether. I reckon this is just to much blue collar/ retired enlisted common sence to be understood by educated officers and politicians who have too much to loose if they dont keep the contractors happy.
	BooDogCrap December 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm 77705256 The XC-XJS was a crapper from the gitgo. FCS should never been let out to bid and … oh darn here we go again those politicians surely know how to screw things up ya know?
	Arizo December 20th, 2009 at 8:39 am First off I’ll bet there are US Veterans who are working for Oshkosh which happens to be a USA corp. Aren’t we suppose to be putting stock in our own companies? These vet’s along with the civilian workforce build various vehicles so as our troops can return home safely as they have in the past present and future which another 30,000 will be off to proudly serve ad protect. Now again I’ll bet some of these troops will have someone who works for Oshkosh or they were employees are now should they have to worry about having a job? Sure Texas might lose jobs but those unemployed can’t travel to europe to talk with the owners, here they can go to corperation owners cause they there where they live. As for saying Oshkosh can’t produce as the foriegn owned comp. can, well that is a slap in the face of all Americans and past present and future veterans. And I am one of those proud retired veterans who proudly served who is angry at those accusations.
	William C. December 20th, 2009 at 10:09 pm It is great to invest in companies like Oshkosh and we should try to support such companies here in the United States, but lets ensure we are getting the quality and performance we need. I have no doubt that Oshkosh can build great trucks, but the pricing is a concern. Despite the veterans and others who work for companies like Oshkosh, some insane liberals like Byron Skinner will rant and insult them for being part of some non-existence military-industrial complex plot to overthrow Obama.