Army seeking to reprogram AMPV funding after delay

The Army wants to shift $18.5 million from the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle program into other programs, as the contractor, BAE Systems, is behind schedule by four to six months.

The decrease, included in the Defense Department's annual omnibus reprogramming request to Congress, results from a testing delay following "tooling and assembly line challenges" at BAE's plant in York, PA, cited in the director of operational test and evaluation's annual report from December.

Those issues, now resolved, also pushed back delivery of the first low-rate initial production vehicles and will apparently affect a full-rate production contract award, according to the reprogramming request.

The FRP award, previously expected in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, is now scheduled for the third quarter of FY-22.

"To responsibly execute and ramp up Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP), AMPV has chosen to smooth out the production profile to better maintain a predictable, steady production rate," the request states.

If approved, the AMPV program would see $426.3 million in European Defense Initiative funding for FY-20.