The US Army today announced the solicitation for the long-awaited recompete of its Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, with the new contract estimated to be worth $7.3 billion.
The new request for proposals for the single-award contract will allow other vehicle makers to bid to unseat Oshkosh Defense as the current vendor. The contract will be awarded in September this year.
A January pre-solicitation from Program Executive Office Combat Support and Combat Service Support, which manages the contract, stated the contract will have a five-year base with five one-year options.
The JLTV is a light armored vehicle designed to carry troops and cargo during military operations. The program is run by the Army and supplies JLTVs to both the Marines and Army units. The vehicle is replacing portions of the service’s High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) fleet.
A post on SAM.gov that the solicitation was out, but didn’t release it publicly. It’s unclear how many trucks and trailers the winning vendor will build under the RFP and PEO CS&CSS didn’t immediately respond to questions. Industry day slides from November indicate the service plans to buy about 17,000 JLTV trucks and approximately 10,000 trailers, though at the time that potential contract was projected to be worth $6.5 billion.
Oshkosh Defense executives have previously told Breaking Defense that they are confident they will retain the contract after building thousands of JLTVs in the last five years. But competitors will be aided by technical data on the JLTV that’s owned by the Army and will be shared with potential bidders.
“Having the access to the technical data is of course helpful — you couldn’t build it without it,” Oshkosh Defense president John Bryant told Breaking Defense in April. But he added that it’ll be difficult for rivals to compete with “the knowledge gained from having built over 10,000 of the vehicles.”
Oshkosh Defense has now delivered over 15,000 vehicles under its current contract, which was worth some $6.7 billion at award time in 2015. Late last month, the company also announced that it had developed a hybrid electric JLTV, though no orders for it had been placed for that version.
Whatever happens with the recompete, Oshkosh Corp. leadership previously warned that they expect their defense revenue to fall due to reductions in JLTV orders by the military. Fiscal 2022 budget documents show that the serviced plans to purchase 2,744 JLTV trucks, down from 3,398 the year prior.
