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United States Military Vehicle General: Guns, G*vins, and Gas Turbines


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The Army required the competitors to deliver a bid sample — a full-up working vehicle — to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, by Oct. 1.

What snarled Rheinmetall, for instance, according to sources, was the timeline it needed to get approvals from the local municipal government to transport the vehicle by tractor trailer or rail and then via air.


Seems like a minor issue. An extension will almost certainly be granted.

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1 hour ago, David Moyes said:


Seems like a minor issue. An extension will almost certainly be granted.

Unlikely. Bid deadlines are usually an absolute. 
 

Once saw a major military communications company excluded from further consideration as the guy delivering the physical copies of their bid got caught in traffic and missed close by less than five minutes. 
 

Only having a single prototype smacks of under investment by Rheinmetall. 

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On 11/2/2018 at 10:19 PM, skylancer-3441 said:

it turned out that there is a report about SAIFV, which is readily available on the internet there http://cdm16635.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p16635coll14/id/56079/rec/1

It appears that, approximately one year later, that link no longer works. If anyone happened to have saved the file while it was available, a rehost would be greatly appreciated.

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3 hours ago, 2805662 said:

Only having a single prototype smacks of under investment by Rheinmetall. 

Yeah, but to some extent, Rheinmetall is a victim of its own success,  The Kf41 was developed specifically for the Australian L400 Phase 3 Requirement.  The very strong interest from half a dozen other nations probably exceeded even the wildest marketing team claims.  All the air miles and repaints on the show car will have hacked into its availability too.  They probably never expected to be the prettiest girl at the ball.

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3 hours ago, David Moyes said:

Are single-bidder competitions allowed in the US? I know in UK and Canada they have to be restarted/cancelled.

Don't know - but having only a single valid bid sure as hell compromises credibility.  Given BAE no bid, Rheinmetall non-compliant bid.  Pretty clear that the requirement set does not work.

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39 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

Sour grapes do not compromise credibility

Have a good read of the requirements.  The fundamental conflict is the usual weight/protection problem.  The driver is the requirement to put two units in a C17 and have very, very high protection and 20% growth margin.  BAE assessed that as not doable.  Rheinmetall/Ratheon bid Kf41 which from my reading of mas and protection claims against L400 Phase 3, cannot meet the OMFV spec and would have been rejected regardless of not providing a bid sample.

 

GD have bid and good luck to them

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1 hour ago, Beer said:

It's not difficult to come with requirements which are impossible to fulfill by one or more bidders. That has been even intentionally used for ages all over the Globe. Not saying that it's this case, of course.

It does happen, no way to tell at this stage.  This is interesting:

But a larger issue, multiple sources conveyed, was the clear differences between what the Army acquisition community and what Army Futures Command wanted to do. Sources confirmed that the acquisition side of the house was willing to agree to extensions, for instance, but AFC, who is in charge of rapid requirements development and prototyping efforts ahead of programs of record, insisted the Army must adhere to the schedule.

Industry also expressed concern to the Army over the roughly 100 mandatory requirements, with just six tradeable ones, expected to be met over 15 months using non-developmental vehicles

From: https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/10/04/lynx-41-disqualified-from-bradley-replacement-competition/

Noting that nobody has published any data on any vehicle presently in existence (non-developmental) that meets the spec or even near it.

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People are conflating requirements -  parameters a system being procured has to meet - and conditions - parameters that respondents to the procurement have to comply with in order to participate. 
 

It doesn’t matter whether a system, in this case, KF41, meets the requirements stipulated by the customer, if the respondent (i.e. Rheinmetall) cannot meet the conditions of the RFP, in this case, delivery of an example system by a specified timeframe. 
 

A respondent has to meet the requirements while complying with the conditions. 

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4 hours ago, 2805662 said:

A respondent has to meet the requirements while complying with the conditions.

Correct.  As I hear it, the failure to provide a sample came about as Raytheon decided not to bid (some time ago).  The decision was based on non-compliance with requirements.  About 10 days out from the closing date, that decision was reversed,  no idea why, seems unlikely that compliance could have changed much so I assume politics.  Problem, Rheinmetall, knowing the bid was off, began turret off deep maintenance on the proto.  The rest writes itself.

 

So non-compliance with requirements lead to non-compliance with conditions

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23 minutes ago, DIADES said:

Correct.  As I hear it, the failure to provide a sample came about as Raytheon decided not to bid (some time ago).  The decision was based on non-compliance with requirements.  About 10 days out from the closing date, that decision was reversed,  no idea why, seems unlikely that compliance could have changed much so I assume politics.  Problem, Rheinmetall, knowing the bid was off, began turret off deep maintenance on the proto.  The rest writes itself.

 

So non-compliance with requirements lead to non-compliance with conditions

 

I'm interested in where you heard that Raytheon decided not to bid and as a result Rheinmetall had the prototype taken apart.

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6 hours ago, DIADES said:

As I hear it, the failure to provide a sample came about as Raytheon decided not to bid (some time ago).  The decision was based on non-compliance with requirements.  About 10 days out from the closing date, that decision was reversed

 

No offense but this is a tad hard to believe. Raytheon was working on the bid during mid-August, and selecting Textron to manufacture would've been difficult to do in a week. Possible but not likely.

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8 hours ago, Clan_Ghost_Bear said:

Raytheon was working on the bid during mid-August, and selecting Textron to manufacture would've been difficult to do in a week. Possible but not likely

Yes they were working on it and I imagine their commercial guys were preping people like Textron in parallel.  The person who provided the info works out of Tuscon where the bid team wee so is a pretty good source.

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https://breakingdefense.com/2019/10/bradley-replacement-army-risks-third-failure-in-a-row/

 

Some neat things from the article on GD's OMFV

>The suspension is a totally new design. The engine and transmission are totally different. Drive train is different. Exhaust placement is different

>3+5 crew/passengers, all in the same compartment in the hull

>360 deg. awareness from cameras

>APS integrated into vehicle

 

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I'm really confused.


Rheinmetall's Lynx Kf41 has been disqualified, officially because the producer miss the delivery of the prototype at Aberdeeen by the Oct.1.


Meanwhile GDLS is in the game with a prototype that is completely different (as the same GDLS said) from the prospected solution ... 

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