“And then there was one.” General Dynamics said today it will not bid for the Army’s largest combat vehicle program, the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle. Nor will GD take the government to court to try to change the terms of the competition, despite having denounced them as intolerably tilted towards competitor BAE Systems and protested, unsuccessfully, to the Army. With bids due today, this double withdrawal on both the business and legal fronts leaves BAE unchallenged.
Congress could potentially intervene, although so far it’s taken mostly symbolic action; the Army could theoretically have a last minute change of heart, though that’s surpassingly unlikely; or AMPV could ultimately get cancelled altogether, which is all too plausible given the budget cuts known as sequestration and the Army’s track record of cancelled programs. But the odds now are that the service’s thousands of aging, vulnerable M113s will be replaced in a range of support roles, from troop carrier to armored ambulance to mobile command post, by a turretless variant of BAE’s Bradley, already the Army’s mainstay combat vehicle.
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