General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) announced it is to deliver the latest version of its Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle to the U.S. Marine Corps on Friday, December 23, 2022. The company have been continuously evolving, and refining ARV solution in alignment with the U.S. Marine Corps’s future recon/counter recon strategy. The last competitors of this ARV program are Textron Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems, the latter claiming to have been continuously evolving and refining its ARV solution in alignment with the U.S. Marine Corps’s future recon/counter recon strategy. An announcement declaring the winner of this contract worth up to $6.8 billion is not expected until late 2023.
The Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle (ARV) is imperative to realizing Marine Corps requirements for Fleet Marine Force 2030. Since the 1980s, the Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) has supported Marine Air-Ground Task Force missions on the battlefield. While the LAV remains operationally effective, the life cycle of this system is set to expire in the mid-2030s. The Marine Corps is interested in six variants of the ARV each with unique roles: command, control, communications and computers-unmanned aerial system (C4/UAS); organic precision fire-mounted; counter UAS; 30mm autocannon and anti-tank guided missile; logistics; and recovery. The Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle (ARV) will be highly mobile, networked, transportable, protected, and lethal.
GDLS is the only company to participate in both the 2019 science and technology demonstrator phase and the competitive prototyping phase, and it pitches its vehicle as using proven components from other programs in its portfolio. The company first built a prototype vehicle in 2017 using its own money. It worked under the S&T contract from 2019 to 2021 and on December 23 turned in a prototype vehicle under the current contract. GDLS’s prototype draws on investments the company has made in three areas: the Katalyst advanced electronic architecture, artificial intelligence capability, and autonomy and robotics. The company has ensured its offering has kept up with these changes to fully meet the current requirements.
Between building the S&T demonstrator and the prototype, General Dynamics Land Systems sought to increase the commonality in systems and components between its ARV proposal and other vehicles it’s currently building, including the U.S. Army’s mobile protected firepower program. The U.S. Marines Corps have changed their focus from kinetic lethality to enhanced surveillance capability and the ability to view and contribute to a common battlefield picture. The swim capability for the vehicle is more robust under the current contract compared to the S&T contract, asking for ocean swim capability rather than the legacy LAV’s riverine capabilities to reflect the Marines’ evolved plans for how they will use the vehicle.
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