American Rheinmetall Vehicles and venture-backed defense technology company
Anduril Industries are joining forces in a “strategic partnership” to
compete in the U.S. Army’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle design program, according to a Sept. 6 joint statement from the companies.
The Army opened up the
competition to design and build prototypes for the replacement of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, releasing a request for proposals to industry this summer.
Last year the Army awarded
contracts to five teams to
develop preliminary designs; American Rheinmetall was among them. The other four teams are Point Blank Enterprises, Oshkosh Defense, BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems.
“The partnership with Anduril brings with it exceptional innovations in software development, command and control, sensor integration, and counter-[unmanned aircraft systems] for inclusion in our OMFV offering,” Matt Warnick, American Rheinmetall’s managing director, said in the statement.
Other companies in the Rheinmetall-led industry team include Textron Systems, Raytheon Technologies, L3Harris Technologies and Allison Transmission; all together they are known as
Team Lynx, a nod to Rheinmetall’s vehicle that was the
company’s planned original bid sample in the Army’s earlier attempt to hold a competition. That effort ended in the fall of 2019 when only General Dynamics Land Systems was able to deliver a physical bid sample to the Army by deadline. Rheinmetall, based in Germany, ran into issues delivering the Lynx and had to drop out of the competition.
With only one bid sample, the Army decided to scrap the competition and
reworked its strategy in a lengthier, five-phase effort that begins with an initial design phase, then moves into a detailed design phase, followed by prototyping, testing and production.