American Rheinmetall Brings Next-Generation Technologies that meet the U.S. Army’s Highest Priority Modernization Challenges, Now. The AUSA Annual Meeting & Exposition takes place in Washington, DC from 10-12 October. This year’s motto is “Building the Army of 2030”. American Rheinmetall Vehicles and the exceptional U.S. defense companies of Team Lynx – Textron Systems, Raytheon Technologies, L3Harris Technologies, Allison Transmission, and Anduril Industries, are designing a transformational next-gen infantry fighting vehicle – The Lynx OMFV – for the Army’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) Program. Featuring a US-designed new, lethal, unmanned 50mm turret with 3rd GEN FLIR, a highly maneuverable and powerful right-sized chassis, advanced on-board protection systems including active protection, and an open systems architecture, ensuring overmatch today and overmatch tomorrow.
In October 2018, Rheinmetall announced a teaming with Raytheon to propose the Lynx KF41 to the U.S. Army in answer to its developing Next-Generation Combat Vehicle program, this slated to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicles and other current platforms. This program, now known as the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMPV) program, was halted on 16 January 2020. The U.S. stated it was cancelling the OMFV prototyping competition in order to revisit the requirements and acquisition timeline. After revamping the OMFV competition the army moved ahead with a new plan that now has five companies – American Rheinmetall Vehicle, BAE Systems, General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), Oshkosh Defense, and Point Blank Enterprises – participating in a concept design phase.
This portion of the programme will end around mid-2022 and the army will take a three to five month ‘break’ to evaluate bids from all companies interested in competing in the next two phases of the competition. The army then plans to award three contracts for phase 3 (detailed design) and phase 4 (prototype build and test) activities. Combined, these two phases will cover 54-months and each company will be tasked with delivering 12 prototypes, as well as several ballistic hulls and turrets, armour coupons, ballistic kits, and data. Then in 2027 the army intends to select one of these competing companies to proceed with low-rate initial production in anticipation of reaching the first unit equipped milestone in 2029, and full rate production in 2030.
American Rheinmetall Vehicles, LLC (ARV), headquartered in Sterling Heights, MI, is a part of Rheinmetall’s Vehicle Systems division and not only specializes in the development of combat vehicle platforms that provide next-generation products to the U.S. Department of Defense and Federal and State Law Enforcement agencies, but also brings the global group’s portfolio of vehicle systems to the U.S. market. American Rheinmetall Vehicles offers both tracked and wheeled combat vehicle platforms with associated sub-systems and works in conjunction with customer program offices to ensure its products meet specification and performance requirements for programs of interest. Among other efforts, it is engaged in supporting the U.S. Army in two particularly high priority modernization programs, the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) program where the Lynx OMFV is being offered, and the Common Tactical Truck (CTT) program where the HX3-CTT is being offered.
