The US Army has approached BAE Systems to ramp up production of its new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) in a bid to accelerate replacing the aging M113 armored personnel carriers, a senior army official revealed at a panel talk.
The army plans to procure at least 197 AMPVs for the fiscal year 2023 to compensate for 200 M113s sent to Ukraine, according to The War Zone.
The army looks to finance the additional procurement through Congress-approved funds that help the US replenish military stocks already transferred to Kyiv, the outlet added.
Changes Procurement Plan
The planned increased annual production of the vehicle – which is derived from the company’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle – is over 53 more than BAE System’s current full-rate production.
The desire to accelerate production is seemingly a reversal of the army’s plan to decrease its annual AMPV procurement from 191 to 131 between 2023 and 2027 “to help the army pay for other priorities,” Defense News wrote.
The decrease would have extended the planned procurement of 2,900 AMPVs to 2035.
Overall Intake Remains Same
“The original plan had us ramping up to a brigade set a year in [low-rate initial production],” BAE’s AMPV program director Bill Sheehy told Defense News.
“Then we were going to drop down substantially as we began full rate … but with issues going on in Eastern Europe, the United States supplying the Ukrainians M113s, we have been approached by the [US] Army to start to develop courses of action that would allow us to ramp up our production rates in order to divest of 113s faster.”
Sheehy explained that the current demand for acceleration doesn’t change the overall procurement quantity, adding that the company is figuring out how to meet the demand.
