Contractors likely to host OMFV digital design

By Ethan Sterenfeld  / October 13, 2021

The Army is "leaning towards" having companies host the authoritative source of truth for the digital design of the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, the Bradley fighting vehicle replacement, James Schirmer, the deputy program executive officer for ground combat systems, said Oct. 13 at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington.

A copy would remain on the government’s computers, and the Army still needs to determine the process for updates and the lag between updates to the contractor and government copies, Schirmer said during a panel discussion of the Army’s combat vehicle modernization.

The service has looked at the Air Force, which has used both government and contractor computers to host digital designs, for guidance, he said. Officials have not made a final decision, and it is not clear what the best solution will be.

“I think it’s less than obvious at this point what the right answer is,” Schirmer said.

Whether it is hosted by the company or the government, having a complete digital design of the vehicle will give greater near-real-time visibility into changes to the design, he said.

Having a full digital design could reduce risk when it comes time to build physical prototypes of the vehicles, Schirmer said. Many of the problems that come up in physical testing today might be found in the digital design phase.

“We’ll never be able to eliminate physical testing, but we’ll be able to eliminate some of that risk by using this approach,” Schirmer said.

Digital design could be especially valuable if the service upgrades the OMFV in the future, he said. Small upgrades could require less testing before they are fielded.

The OMFV program is currently in a concept design phase with five prime contractors that the Army selected in July: General Dynamics Land Systems, BAE Systems, Rheinmetall, Oshkosh Defense and Point Blank Enterprises. During this phase, contractors will refine their ideas for the OMFV and repeatedly check in with Army officials, while the Army develops its requirements.

Adding the concept design phase to the acquisition process has allowed for more efficient and useful conversations with industry, Maj. Gen. Ross Coffman, director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team, said at the panel.

“Because they’ve been selected, we can have open, honest and candid discussions,” Coffman said. If companies had to refine their concepts during a traditional competition, acquisition rules could restrict their discussions with Army officials.

It is important that the next phases of the OMFV competition, the design and prototyping phases, will include three companies, rather than two, Coffman said. Two companies, General Dynamics and BAE Systems, currently dominate the Army’s combat vehicle programs.

The final request for proposals for the design and prototyping phases will be released in May, he said. There will be another full and open competition for those phases, although the five companies that are in the concept design phase are expected to participate in similar teams.

Integrated concept reviews, the first set of major one-on-one meetings between the Army and the five contractors in the concept design phase, took place three weeks ago, Schirmer told reporters before the panel.

Since many of the requirements for the OMFV will include trade-offs between one desired characteristic and another, many of the discussions with industry have involved questions from both sides, Coffman told reporters. The Army wants to determine what requirements are feasible.

On a separate track from the competition for the program, the Army is developing a modular open systems architecture for the OMFV, which contractors will be required to follow for their detailed digital designs in the next phase of the program.

The Army has sent the first two tranches of draft architecture information to contractors, who have responded with hundreds of comments, Schirmer told reporters.