Oshkosh Defense wins US Army’s Stryker up-gunning contract

The US Army threw a metaphorical curve ball and selected an Oshkosh Defense team to outfit its Double V-Hull A1 Stryker (DVHA1) vehicles with 30 mm cannons.

The service announced its decision on 3 June saying it is awarding the company with a contract worth up to USD942 million over six years. So far, the army has approved plans to outfit three brigades with 83 Medium Caliber Weapon Systems (MCWSs) each but this contract covers up to six brigades worth of vehicles if the service decides that is how it wants to proceed, said Colonel Bill Venable, the Stryker Brigade Combat Team project manager.

For now, the service is ordering 91 vehicles for approximately USD130 million, and will provide the Oshkosh Defense team with the vehicles and the XM813 cannon for integration.

Col Venable said that the service will receive its first production vehicle around May 2022 and will reach its first unit equipped date around December 2023, roughly 15 months later than initially anticipated, due to competition challenges and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Janes previously reported that it wasn't until later in the competition that Oshkosh Defense teamed up with Pratt Miller (before it bought the company) and decided to use a Rafael Defense turret. General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), which produces the vehicle, and Leonardo DRS also submitted bid samples to the army.

“It was [a] performance-oriented source selection, best value to the government [with] performance over costs, and those performance metrics … are what tipped the scale,” Col Venable said.