General Dynamics Threatens to Quit Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle Competition

General Dynamics Land Systems cannot and will not compete for the Army’s largest surviving weapons program, the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, unless the service changes how it is handling the program, GDLS’s senior spokesman told me yesterday afternoon. A GDLS withdrawal would be yet another embarrassment for the Army’s chronically troubled acquisition system, since it would effectively leave AMPV with a single bidder to replace its aging and vulnerable M113 transports, BAE Systems, which is offering a modified version of its current M2 Bradley.

General Dynamics spokesman Peter Keating told me the Army must either (1) relax its mobility requirements so GDLS’s eight-wheel-drive Stryker could qualify or (2) provide enough technical data on the tracked Bradley that GDLS can come up with its own tracked offering. But while the company filed a protest last month with the Army Materiel Command (which is expected to reply Friday) he said, “we are not optimistic that we’re going to get a successful outcome at this level.” (Emphasis mine). That wording implies that GDLS plans to ask the Government Accountability Office to overrule the Army, though Keating would not confirm it: “We’ll take it one step at a time,” he said.

“We know how to build vehicles, we want to compete on this, we simply don’t have all the information… so we cannot compete,” Keating said. “We have asked them [the Army] for the data; they have not provided it.” Why not? “You’d have to ask them.”

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