Several major industry players have bid for a chance to build the U.S. Marine Corps’ next reconnaissance vehicle as the service embarks on a prototyping effort to replace its aging fleet of lightly armored vehicles.
Incumbent General Dynamics Land Systems — which is the manufacturer of the Light Armored Vehicle-25 currently in service — announced it submitted an advanced reconnaissance vehicle, or ARV, prototype proposal by the Marine Corps’ May 3 deadline.
Textron is competing with a prototype it already built and drove nearly 750 miles, dubbed “Cottonmouth.”BAE Systems would not confirm whether it plans to participate, but several sources connected to the competition told Defense News they believe the company submitted a bid. BAE already manufactures the Marine Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle.
SAIC, which received an earlier contract to develop technology for the ARV from the Office of Naval Research in 2019, confirmed to Defense News that it would not compete in this next prototyping phase.
The Marine Corps wanted proposals for the research and development of an ARV prototype vehicle as part of its pursuit to acquire its replacement of roughly 600 1980s-era Light Armored Vehicle-25s in order to enable light-armored reconnaissance battalions to function as a battlefield manager, according to a solicitation posted on the federal contracting website beta.sam.gov. The vehicles will need to operate both on land and amphibiously.