Contracts for the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) Phase II Concept Design Phase have been awarded to five firms, the US Army announced on Friday.
The $299 million in contracts cover the design of a replacement for the army’s Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The companies include Point Blank Enterprises, Oshkosh Defense, BAE Systems, General Dynamics Land Systems, and American Rheinmetall Vehicles.
Concept Design Phase
The Concept Design Phase is Phase II of the OMFV project. This is part of a five-phase plan to encourage innovation, maximize competition, and produce a “transformational infantry fighting vehicle that will dominate maneuver in multi-domain operations.”
“The Concept Design Phase reflects the Army’s effort to structure a program which incentivizes industry innovation and provides the analytical underpinnings for the development of an abbreviated capability development document,” Brig. Gen. Glenn Dean, program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems, stated.
Jim Miller, director of business development at BAE Systems, said that “soldiers on the future battlefield should set the pace of the fight and dominate in lethality, survivability, and mobility through technology.”
“The conceptual design phase allows us to demonstrate how we marry future technology with our integration and production experience to deliver a new level of capability to our troops on an ever-changing, interconnected, multi-domain, joint battlefield,” he added.
The army plans to hold another open competition for the Detailed Design Phase of the project, the third phase, in 2023. The plan will involve up to three contracts.
As per the US Army roadmap of the five-phase plan, prototyping is expected by the fiscal year 2025, with vehicle testing by 2026, and full-scale production by the second quarter of 2030.