04 May 2021

USMC weighing ARV bids for prototyping competition

by Ashley Roque

Industry bids for the US Marine Corps’ (USMC’s) Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle (ARV) prototyping competition were due on 3 May and at least two companies said they are vying for contracts.

Both General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) and Textron Systems announced that they had responded to the service’s request for prototype proposals: a document only available to National Advanced Mobility Consortium members.

In a 2020 draft publicly released, the service said it intends to award up to four contracts for this upcoming prototyping phase that will end with an evaluation.

“The ARV prototype vehicle (PV) is envisioned as a next-generation platform with a combination of capabilities that will enable light armoured reconnaissance (LAR) battalions to function as a battlefield manager,” the US Army wrote on behalf of the USMC effort last year. “This will require multiple and resilient means to process information and communicate,” it added.

The prototypes will need to have an “open system architecture” and strike the right balance between the demands to “sense, shoot, move, communicate and remain transportable” as part of the naval expeditionary force.

“The ARV PV will provide a balanced set of performance, payload, and protection attributes with sufficient size, weight, and power (SWaP) to accommodate future growth and the development of other platform variants,” the notice added.

David Phillips, Textron Systems’ senior vice-president for land systems, provided reporters with some additional ARV requirement details during a 3 May call. He noted that the USMC wants the prototypes to weigh less than 18.5 tons, there are likely to be different variants, and that four vehicle should fit onto each ship-to-shore connector.

“The vehicle not only has to have outstanding land mobility, it has to swim in the ocean, it has to depart from connectors, and it has to transition through the surf zone,” Phillips explained.