The US Army is awarding a $1.14 billion contract to General Dynamics
Land Systems or GDLS for its Mobile Protected Firepower or MRF program
Viewers may note that this is one of the U.S Army’s top 35 modernization priorities.
The Mobile Protected Firepower program is part of the Army’s Next-Generation Combat Vehicle
portfolio, which is developing future ground vehicles as part of the services’ broader,
multi-billion modernization effort that includes the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle.
The Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle, which will be the Army’s first
newly designed vehicle in over 40 years, will provide the Army’s infantry brigades with
essentially a vehicle for directing firepower against stubborn obstacles.
In this video Defense Updates analyzes what US Army's Mobile
Protected Firepower platform is? Let's get into the details.
In November 2017, the Army issued Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Engineering and
Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase and, in order to maximize competition,
planned to award up to two Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) contracts for the EMD phase in early 2019.
US Army is expected to acquire 504 MPF systems.
SAIC partnered with ST Kinetics and CMI Defence to offer its Next Generation
Armored Fighting Vehicle. BAE Systems offered a
vehicle based on the M8 Armored Gun System.
General Dynamics Land Systems offered a variant of the Griffin III.
In December 2018, the Army selected BAE and GDLS's proposals to move forward.
The Army awarded two Rapid Prototyping contracts for MPF.
GDLS delivered its prototypes (based on the Griffin II) in December 2020. BAE
faced production difficulties and supplier issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic,
which delayed delivery to March 2021.
The assessment phase began in January 2021 at Fort Bragg (NC) with testing scheduled to run through
June 2021. In March 2022, Janes reported that BAE was disqualified from the competition
due to "noncompliance issues," leaving GDLS as the only remaining option
GDLS's offering was selected for the US Army's Mobile Protected Firepower program
on 28 June 2022.
The initial contract is for 96 vehicles with the first delivery by the end of 2023.
The first units are expected to be equipped with it by Q4FY25.
Army Brig. Gen. Glenn Dean, the service's Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat System
said, the US Army plans to field four battalions by 2030
with the “bulk” of the procurement fielded by 2035.
He added that the program had a total lifecycle cost of $17 billion across a 30-year lifespan.
MPF is basically a replacement for the M551.
In the mid to late 2020s, the U.S. Army planned to convert its tank-less airborne,
air assault, light infantry, and mountain divisions into new Joint Forcible Entry divisions.
Each will be equipped with a battalion of 42 Mobile Protected Firepower platform.
Mobile Protected Firepower looks like a tank: it has a turret and a four-person crew. The
turret is armed with the M35 105-millimeter main gun and a coaxial 7.62-millimeter machine gun.
The fire control system is derived from the system used on the M1
Abrams main battle tank, also produced by General Dynamics.
Additionally, MPF uses a tracked chassis based on the British Army’s Ajax reconnaissance vehicle.
Doug Bush, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition,
Logistics, and Technology, said in a statement,
“The MPF program did exactly what the Army asked, which was to complete a competitive
and accelerated rapid prototyping effort with Soldier touchpoints,”
He added, "MPF is a benchmark program,
as the acquisition and requirement communities worked together to complete the [middle-tier
acquisition rapid-prototyping] phase and move this system into production in just under four years."
US Army Brig. Gen. Glenn Dean, told reporters at a roundtable earlier, according to Breaking Defense,
“This achieved everything we were intending to . We had two vendors. They were competitive."
Gordon Stein,
General Dynamics Land Systems vice president and general manager for U.S. operations said,
“We are honored that the Army has chosen our offering for this important program.
Our team worked tirelessly to deliver our prototypes in time to support the
Army’s evaluation plan, and we incorporated Soldier feedback into the final design.”
In a statement, a BAE spokesperson said the company would use lessons
learned from MPF in future efforts.
“We believe BAE Systems’ Mobile Protected Firepower solution
would provide the capability the Infantry Brigade Combat Team needs,” a spokesperson
said. “While we were not chosen to move forward in the MPF competition, we will take the innovation
and lessons learned from our solution with us and apply it to future modernization efforts.”
The US Army would formally name the vehicles
around the Association of the US Army conference in October.
While the platform looks like a light tank, US Army insists that Mobile
Protected Firepower is not a tank. There is merit to this as although
it can fulfill some tank missions, it lacks the armored protection to face
other tanks or survive on a battlefield saturated with anti-tank guided missiles.
MPF is meant to augment the firepower of tank-less units without having to provide them
68-ton Abrams main battle tanks that are heavier and logistically challenging to deploy overseas.
As proven time and again, a big gun is required to take out obstacles such as enemy bunkers,
and strongpoints and this is where MPF will be handy.