Army calling for RCV-L white papers

By John Liang / June 4, 2019 at 3:46 PM

The Army is calling on industry to submit white papers and prototype proposals for the Robotic Combat Vehicle-Light.

According to a May 31 Federal Business Opportunities notice, the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Ground Vehicle Systems Center announced it plans to issue a request for white papers from the National Advanced Mobility Consortium (NAMC) on June 17, "and follow with an invitation to participate in an Oral Review. Details pertaining to the date and format of Oral Review will be provided in the RWP.

"All NAMC members who submit a white paper will be invited to participate in the Oral Review," the notice continues. "Any NAMC member that does not participate in the Oral Review will not be eligible to participate in the second stage of RCV-L. The government will assess the offeror's White Paper in accordance with predetermined assessment criteria and select highly qualified offerors to participate in the second stage."

During that second stage, the Army will issue requests for prototype proposals to those selected offerors, and "may award up to two agreements for RCV-L."

While the Army "may be interested in pursuing a follow-on production effort as a result of the RCV-L RPP . . . due to the technical and fiscal uncertainties, the government does not have any estimated quantities or total value for the potential follow-on effort." The service said it would "provide more details in regards to a potential follow-on production effort in the" request for white papers.

Inside Defense reported in April that the Army has stated it wants three variants of the RCV -- Light, Medium and Heavy, to serve different roles within its formations, but that doesn't mean they will each belong to one formation, according to one of the project's leaders.

"When we talk about RCV-Light, Medium and Heavy, it does not equate to [infantry brigade combat team], [Stryker] BCT and [armored] BCT . . . Any one of those could find their way into any one of our current base constructs of formations," Col. Warren Sponsler, deputy director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles cross-functional team, told an audience at NDIA's Robotics Capabilities Conference in April.

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