Robotic Vehicle Program Will Test Army's Acquisition Agility.

• Author: Harper, Jon

* The Army's squad multipurpose equipment transport program is about to enter a new phase, and will soon test the service's ability to rapidly acquire new platforms.

The aim of the SMET project is to field robotic vehicles that can carry dismounted soldiers' gear and lighten their load. Following testing of industry offerings at Fort Benning, Georgia, last fall, the Army downselected to four vendors: General Dynamics Land Systems, HDT Global; Howe and Howe Technologies; and a Polaris-ARA-Neya Systems team.

Once Congress passes a final defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2018 --which was expected to happen before the end of March--the Army planned to award contracts for each vendor to build 20 prototypes.

The platforms will then be put through their paces by soldiers over the next year or so at Fort Drum, New York, and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Maj. Gen. John George, director for force development, Army G-8, told reporters at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

The service intends to use "other transaction authority" provided by Congress to move from prototyping to a Milestone C decision and a downselect to one vendor in about 15 months, he said. "That is significantly faster than we have been able to do previous efforts."

Frustrated by the slow pace of Pentagon procurement, lawmakers have passed legislation aimed at cutting through bureaucratic red tape.

Provisions in the last three defense authorization bills enable the Army "to do these kinds of prototype competitions using flexible authorities like other transaction authority agreements, and then potentially go straight to follow-on production without further competition," said Andrew Hunter, director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This looks like an interesting case study in how a military service can use those authorities to significantly expedite an acquisition process," he said of the SMET program.

The Army wants to buy as many as 5,700 robotic mules for brigade combat teams depending on their price tag and funding availability, George said. Service officials want the vehicles to be able to haul 1,000 pounds of equipment, travel 60 miles off-road in 72 hours or less, generate 3 kilowatts of power stationary and 1 kilowatt moving, and cost about $100,000 or less.

A typical program of this kind would take upwards of 10 years, George noted, but the...