Army seeking to free up funding from Joint Assault Bridge program

The Army has $25.3 million available from the Joint Assault Bridge program that it wants to use for other purposes, according to the Defense Department's annual omnibus reprogramming request to Congress.

The service is delaying a full-rate production decision for one year following a fiscal year 2019 "reliability failure during initial operational test and evaluation," the request, obtained by Inside Defense, states.

The program's FY-20 funding after the requested decrease would be $180.2 million in the base budget.

"This is the JAB program's first delay requiring funding rephrasing," according to the request. "The root causes of the IOT&E failure were hydraulic systems failures and fuel system leaks."

The Army was planning to retest the JAB platform in June, but that testing has been postponed to September, with FRP scheduled for April 2021.

The retest was delayed due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Army acquisition executive Bruce Jette told reporters in April.