The Army and Marine Corps awarded three companies development contracts Wednesday for their next generation of wheeled tactical vehicles, which will require a gigabit speed local area network to support onboard computers, communications and electronic warfare systems.
AM General, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Oshkosh Corp. won 27-month engineering and development contracts valued at $64.5 million, $66.3 million and $56.4 million respectively to produce 22 prototype Joint Light Tactical Vehicles each. The services will evaluate the prototypes at Army test centers in Arizona, Maryland and New Mexico.
The services then will select a single contractor to manufacture up to 50,000 JLTVs for the Army and another 5,000 for the Marine Corps. The development contracts specify that the services will pay no more than $250,000 per JLTV, putting the value of the production contract for 55,000 vehicles at $13.8 billion.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2012/08/three-contractors-tapped-develop-sample-humvee-replacements/57622/.