BAE Systems was planning to enter the competition with a version of the CV90 Mk IV, but the company dropped out of the program in June 2019. The company stated that the OMFV program did not align with the company's current developmental priorities, and appeared to take issue with the aggressive schedule. BAE Systems is building the Army's new AMPV and Marine Corps' new Amphibious Combat Vehicle, and is in the running for the Army's future Mobile Protected Firepower light tank. A team of Raytheon and Rheinmetall was disqualified from the OMFV program when it did not deliver a bid before the submission deadline.

In a statement, the Army said it will revisit program requirements, acquisition strategy, and schedule. It remains to be seen how big an impact this decision will have on the capabilities of the future Bradley replacement, including the service's desire for unmanned and eventually autonomous capabilities.

Troubles with replacing the Bradley is nothing new for the Army. Prior to the OMFV, the service struggled for years to develop a new combat vehicle. An effort to develop a family of 20- to 30-ton manned ground vehicles under the now defunct Future Combat Systems program was terminated in 2009. A follow-on ground combat vehicle effort was canceled in the FY15 budget due to affordability issues. The $30+ billion GCV aimed to procure 1,874 vehicles to replace a portion of the Bradley fleet. There were also concerns that the GCV concept had grown to some 70 tons, on par with an Abrams tank, which would limit vehicle mobility.

Source:  Defense News
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Author: S. McDougall, Defense Analyst 

Leidos engineers will provide a technology refresh and concurrency upgrades to previously-fielded Army CDT systems, which provide training on several different vehicle types, including the US Army Tank and Tank Engineering Variant, Stryker, Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles, and Tactical Wheeled Variant (TWV) families. The CDT contract includes a complete replacement of all USMC driving simulators, in both fixed and mobile trailer-based configurations, to provide new driver training capabilities across a range of Marine Corps tactical vehicles at multiple USMC sites.

The CDT contract provides training in critical driver or crew tasks that are time consuming, resource constrained or too dangerous to conduct on actual equipment. With the use of a CDT simulator, dangerous or mission-critical training tasks are easily repeated. The new CDT systems provide cost-effective capabilities that maximize training and realism, and deliver more reliable, efficient, and extensible driver training. The modernized CDT system architecture is designed to support planned, systematic interoperability and reuse by other virtual training applications.

Source:  www.Leidos.com

Almaz-Antey is the prime contractor for the S-400 program. This system has been in service with the Russian armed forces since 2007.

Source:  Times of India
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