Combat Vehicles

The Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee has provided funding to cancel the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program in its mark of the fiscal year 2011 defense budget.

The Navy has requested almost $243 million for the program, but the subcommittee has voted to cut $204 million from EFV while effectively adding $185 million to cancel the program, resulting in an overall decrease of $20.5 million, according to a copy of the subcommittee mark obtained by Inside the Air Force.

Twenty armored fighting vehicles outfitted with threat-detection and countermeasure systems are en route to Afghanistan to begin a yearlong operational evaluation, according to the project's program manager.

Despite trimming $8 billion from the Obama administration's fiscal year 2011 defense spending request, the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee plans on fully funding many of the Army's ground and aerial vehicle platforms and providing additional funding to some programs, according to statement issued today by the subcommittee.

The subcommittee met this morning to consider the administration's FY-11 request. The full Senate Appropriations Committee will meet Thursday afternoon to consider the subcommittee's bill.

As the Army has hit speed bumps in its strategy for the multibillion-dollar Ground Combat Vehicle, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is moving full-speed ahead with an effort to revolutionize vehicle manufacturing to foster the open-source design of a prototype GCV, according to a DARPA announcement.

As the Army regroups after suspending the Ground Combat Vehicle competition last week, some officials say the program's new way forward likely will shed the kind of reliance on high-risk technology development that sunk parts of the Future Combat Systems effort.

(Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:30 p.m. to include new information from the Army.)

Based on the findings of a special "red team" report, the Army is canceling its Ground Combat Vehicle request for proposals process and intends to issue revised requirements that will allow industry teams to bid again some time in the future.

Congress has approved a Pentagon reprogramming request to transfer funds directly into the Stryker program's double-V hull protection effort, according to documents sent to the Defense Department comptroller's office last week.

In a prior approval reprogramming request sent to Congress in June, the Pentagon sought to shift $102 million in Stryker savings -- left over from reduced survivability kit requirements -- to test double-v-shaped hull variants being developed by General Dynamics in cooperation with the Army.

With a make-or-break test scheduled for September, Army and Boeing officials said last week preliminary equipment demonstrations of the Early Infantry Brigade Combat Team Increment 1 suite of equipment have showed marked performance improvements since last fall.

The House Armed Services Committee has denied a Pentagon reprogramming request to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the procurement and modernization of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and Abrams tank to "other priorities," Inside the Army has learned.

The panel denied a measure in the Pentagon's omnibus reprogramming request that would have shifted $200 million from Bradley procurement and $143 million from both Bradley and Abrams research and development, according to sources in Congress and the Army.