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COTS Journal | October 201282

Jeff Child, Editor-in-ChiefEDITORIALCOTS

ing vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers of major subsys-tems and parts—increased production to keep pace. Now that industry faces a period of uncertainty as requirements for these vehicles decrease with the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the planned drawdown in Afghanistan, along with declines in the DoD’s budget.

Making up for reductions in DoD purchases by increasing sales to foreign governments is an option, but an increasingly unlikely one. Sales of U.S.-manufactured TWVs to foreign gov-ernments may be affected by multiple interrelated factors. Ac-cording to U.S. manufacturers, sales of used Army TWVs to for-eign governments could affect their ability to sell new vehicles. Complicating matters further, there are mixed views on how the U.S. arms transfer control regimes may affect foreign gov-ernments’ decisions to purchase U.S. vehicles. According to the GAO report, U.S. manufacturers and foreign officials expressed concerns with processing times and U.S. end-use restrictions—although foreign officials also said that such concerns have not been a determining factor when purchasing TWVs that meet their requirements.

Despite the potentially stark picture for military ground ve-hicles in the years ahead, it’s clear that the U.S. Army has taken steps to make sure it gets the most for its money. Part of that effort is an approach it calls its Agile Process. The Army Agile Process involves blending programs of record with promising emerging technologies and, in some cases, commercial off-the-shelf products. The focus has been described as managing pro-grams according to cost-saving “should cost” goals. This strat-egy has already been used in new procurement programs, such as the Ground Combat Vehicle, or GCV, and the Joint Light Tac-tical Vehicle, known as JLTV. In the case of the JLTV, the Army added another twist by synchronizing requirements with the Marine Corps and shortening the Engineering Manufacturing and Design, or EMD phase. The result was an improved capabil-ity and substantial cost savings for the program, according to Army officials.

Although hindsight is 20/20—as the saying goes—the world of military vehicle design and manufacturing now seems light years away from the days of the huge, expensive—and ar-guably wasteful—programs like Future Combat Systems. And while things perhaps have moved too far in the opposite direc-tion, most agree that today’s more practical and cost-conscious thinking is a positive evolution. Either way, success will be judged based on whether our warfighters get the ground vehicles they need to do their jobs safely and effectively.

Over the past couple years, the ground vehicle segment of the U.S. defense industry has experienced considerably more turmoil than other segments. Ever since the plug

was pulled on the Future Combat Systems program, the DoD and U.S. Army have gone round after round alerting and revamping their plans for next-gen vehicle requirements—and with those came rethinking plans for vehicle electronics. The good news for the embedded computing industry has been that onboard com-munications and control electronics are still expected to multi-ply in sophistication for both next-gen and Current Force fight-ing vehicles. And while new designs have been a waiting game, tech upgrades of existing vehicles remain a healthy business. The military vehicle market is a vivid example of how our segment of the defense market—embedded computing and electronics—can thrive when overall defense budgets are tightening.

All that said, the coming years are looking fairly lean over-all for ground vehicles—and for “new start” ground vehicle designs. The DoD has earmarked a budget of $2.61 billion for GCVs, with the Army accounting for $2.18 billion of the total allocation. A new report from Frost & Sullivan called “Analysis of the DoD Ground Combat Vehicle Market” says that the GCV market generated revenues of over $3.67 billion in 2011, and esti-mates that revenues will decrease to $3.19 billion by 2017.

The cuts could get severe if sequestration goes into full ef-fect. “Mandated budget cuts, reductions in ground troops and the shift in military strategy to the Asia Pacific region will force armed services to make tough decisions on the type of programs they need to cut, reduce, maintain or increase,” said Frost & Sul-livan Senior Industry Analyst Michael Blades. “If sequestration occurs, all GCV modernization programs are likely to be termi-nated.” Blades also remarked that next-generation platforms are also likely to be based on existing commercial or government vehicles, with upgrades preferred over building vehicles from the ground up.

Even though electronics upgrades are still expected to re-main a healthy business, there’s the potential ripple effects to the slowdown of military vehicle construction overall. A GAO report last month—specifically focused on wheeled tactical ve-hicles—reports that the U.S. industrial base for those types of vehicles is in jeopardy as budget cuts move forward. DoD pro-curements for two types of tactical wheeled vehicles (TWV)—for example, the High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Ve-hicle (HMMWV) and the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV)—increased more than fivefold from 2002 to 2006 in terms of vehicles built. The U.S. TWV industrial base—includ-

Rough Road for Ground Vehicles

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