Army truck buyers face 'fix or purchase' dilemma.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Army Vehicles

* The Array's aging fleet of 160,000 Humvees needs to be modernized, officials say. The plan is twofold: Refurbish a portion of the Humvee fleet and replace the rest with brand-new trucks.

It sounds simple enough, except that the project has become a high-profile test of whether the Army, after a string of failed weapon-acquisition programs, can successfully carry this one out.

This month, the Army plans to launch the so-called Modernized Expanded Capacity Vehicle, or MECV, program. It will select up to three contractor teams to take old Humvees and turn them into high-performance, blast-survivable vehicles. The project has drawn significant industry attention. Suppliers regard it as a "must win" as they expect military procurements to decline in the coming years.

The Army's program office that oversees tactical vehicles could award up to three fixed-price contracts of up to $4.5 million each by May 2012.

MECV winners would first build prototypes. If the vehicle goes into production, the Army could buy as many as 5,750 trucks, at a cost of no more than $180,000 each.

Companies believe that the MECV winner could stand to gain billions more dollars of additional work down the road, if the Army chooses to refurbish one-third of its Humvee fleet. Additional business could come from the Marine Corps, which also plans to embark on a Humvee modernization effort, possibly in 2014, and will be closely watching what the Army does. Both services plan to keep Humvees in their truck inventories for at least another two decades.

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The other piece of the truck modernization strategy is the Army-Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, program. The Army wants to buy up to 25,000 new JLTVs over the next decade, although the program is at risk of losing its funding. Senate appropriators already have sought to terminate JLTV on the premise that the program has been mismanaged and that the services have not justified the need for an expensive new vehicle.

In response to the appropriators' concerns, Army and Marine Corps leaders have joined forces in a bid to spare JLTV from the budget ax.

Both the Humvee recapitalization and JLTV are needed to modernize the fleet, said Thomas Bagwell, the Army's deputy program executive officer for combat support and combat service support.

These two programs have "always been envisioned as complementary efforts," he said during a news conference at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual...