JLTV: Arkansas Likely To Approve Bonds For Lockheed Factory

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/05/jltv-arkansas-likely-to-approve-bonds-for-lockheed-factory/



Arkansas officials talk up the bond for Lockheed Martin’s JLTV factory

JLTV: Arkansas Likely To Approve Bonds For Lockheed Factory
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on May 26, 2015 at 5:02 PM

Not every vote on a Pentagon program is cast in Washington, DC. Today, the Arkansas state legislature convened in special session to decide on an $87 million bond issue to benefit aerospace giant Lockheed Martin. The “super project” at stake — to use the Arkansas statute’s term of art — is the expansion of Lockheed’s East Camden plant so it can build some 50,000 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles.

That’s assuming Lockheed wins the JLTV contract, of course: Rivals Oshkosh and AM General are still very much in the running, with a decision expected in July. In this race with two traditional truck-makers, high-tech Lockheed is the high-risk choice. Lockheed partner and veteran ground vehicle manufacturer BAE built the team’s JLTV prototypes in Sealy, Texas, but now Sealy’s shut down and the entire line removed to Camden, where it’s been upgraded and reassembled. Lockheed’s built missiles and munitions at Camden since 1981, but it only turned on the ground vehicle line last fall. Lockheed argues all this newness is to its advantage: It has the most cutting-edge technology and manufacturing processes to build an affordable vehicle with Humvee-level mobility and MRAP-level protection.



So what does the bond issue do for Lockheed? “It adds to our competitive posture, and it communicates the strength of our long-running partnership with the state of Arkansas,” Lockheed spokesman John Kent told me. “If LM wins the contract, we will use the funds to prepare the Camden facility for full-rate production, help build an automotive test track, install tooling and production equipment and implement training programs in cooperation with Southern Arkansas University Tech,” whose campus is actually co-located at the Camden site.

The company plans to invest $125 million in Camden if it wins JLTV. The $87 million bond issue would cover almost 70 percent of that, leaving only $38 million for Lockheed to finance out of pocket or at competitive lending rates.

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The JLTV program is supposed to replace Hummers and MRAPs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Light_Tactical_Vehicle

The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) is a United States military (specifically U.S. Army, USSOCOM, and U.S. Marine Corps) program to part-replace the Humvee that is currently in service[4] with a family of more survivable vehicles with greater payload.

JLTV traces back to 2005 but publicly emerged in January 2006, with early government requests for information noting: "In response to an operational need and an ageing fleet of light tactical wheeled vehicles, the joint services have developed a requirement for a new tactical wheeled vehicle platform that will provide increased force protection, survivability, and improved capacity over the current Up-Armoured High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (UAH) while balancing mobility and transportability requirements with total ownership costs." The joint service nature of the effort was assured through Congressional language in the Fiscal Year 2006 (FY06) Authorization Act, which mandated that any future tactical wheeled vehicle program would be a joint program.[1]

The JLTV program incorporates lessons learned from the earlier and now halted Future Tactical Truck Systems (FTTS) program and other associated efforts.[1] JLTV has evolved throughout various development phases and milestones but variants will be capable of performing armament carrier, utility, command and control (shelter), ambulance, reconnaissance and a variety of other tactical and logistic support roles. JLTV will be manufactured to comply with the US Army's Long Term Armor Strategy (LTAS).[1] The JLTV program was in danger of being outpaced by the rapid development of lightweight MRAPs.[5]

The JLTV program (including numbers required and pricing) has evolved considerably as the program developed and requirements stabilized.

Type light tactical vehicle[1]
Place of origin United States
Production history
Designer United States Army
Unit cost US$423,298 (FY13, inc R&D)[2]
Variants Combat Tactical Vehicle (CTV)
Combat Support Vehicle (CSV)[3]
Specifications
Secondary
armament
Up to and including four M7 smoke grenade dischargers
Operational
range
300 miles
Speed Forward
Road: 70 mph
Off road: varies
Reverse: 8 mph

..

Uparmored HMMWVs usta cost around $220 grand and MRAPs usta cost $430 grand to 900,00 grand.

Arkansas leads the race to the bottom.