Dicks: Seven Years Is Too Long for U.S. Army GCVRep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., sees no reason why it should take seven years for the U.S. Army to build a Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV).
Speaking March 16, the ranking member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee urged Army leaders to shorten the set timeline for the GCV program.
https://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=5980719&c=LAN&s=TOP
"I think five years is more than enough time to get this done," Dicks said. He asked Army Secretary John McHugh to reconsider the current seven-year schedule.
The Army could accelerate how fast it takes to build the new vehicle by pursuing less ambitious requirements and incremental improvements, he said.
"There are systems around the world that we could probably modify and utilize as we have in other areas," Dicks said. "I think seven years is just fraught with danger."
McHugh said that through the competitive bid process, industry teams could always propose faster schedules, and thereby make their bids more attractive. McHugh also cited recent testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that warned seven years could be too fast.
"A four-year engineering and manufacturing phase for an entirely new combat vehicle appears to be ambitious," the GAO said earlier this month.
The Army's own GCV Red Team concluded that moderate improvements to existing vehicles could be achieved in seven years, but to build a next-generation combat vehicle would more likely take 10 to 12 years, according to the GAO.
"We're trying to do the best we can," McHugh said. "I fully recognize that time is money and to the extent that we can speed up that timeline, we will do what we can."
The Army was expected to award contracts to up to three industry teams in April, however, the date has moved to May as the Army waits to see how the 2011 budget is resolved. Under the Continuing Resolution funding levels, the Army does not have enough money to award contracts for GCV, which could cause the first production vehicle to slip, according to senior Army officials.
The three teams that have submitted bids are an SAIC-led team that includes Boeing, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, and Rheinmetall; a BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman-led effort; and a group led by General Dynamics Land Systems, which includes Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
The GCV is supposed to replace Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.
When Dicks was chairman of the subcommittee last March, he had a very similar message for McHugh and Gen. George Casey, the service's chief of staff, telling them that he thought the GCV schedule could be accelerated.
At this week's hearing, Casey said he and Defense Secretary Robert Gates pushed hard to get it down to five years, but that Army and OSD staff came back and said seven years was as fast as it could be done.
The Army also says that with its second request for proposals, it has a much better handle on the vehicle's requirements. While the original request had roughly 990 requirements, the new one lists 136 tier-one, or non-negotiable, requirements, McHugh said.
"I heard this referred to as a 'troubled program,' the contracts are not even out yet," Casey said. "I have to ask for a little bit of slack here."