via Army Times...
The new document says the Army plans to award a five-year EMD contract in May 2014 to one contractor who will manufacture 29 vehicles for government testing, followed by a three-year low-rate initial production contract beginning in 2020.Simple question.
Earlier documents estimated the EMD phase would run from fiscal 2014 to 2017 and cost $388 million. But the final plan stretches that out while adding to the overall price tag. The EMD phase will run from fiscal 2015 to 2019 and cost $458 million to develop and build the 29 prototypes.
The document released Tuesday lowered that number slightly to $436 million.
Likewise, whereas the estimate for the LRIP order of 289 vehicles between 2018 and 2020 was initially pegged at $1.08 billion, the Tuesday RFP lists three options for the LRIP years totaling $1.2 billion, giving the program a $1.68 billion budget before full-rate production begins.
If the Army is able to do this with their Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) then why wasn't the Marine Corps able to move forward with a low rate production run of Marine Personnel Carriers? Or even better a quick and dirty high rate production run?
As things stand the US Army is drinking our milkshake. Is the Air Wing and MARSOC the only portions of the Marine Corps that current leadership cares about?
