Update: USMC solicits industry to provide mobile air-defence system for JLTV vehicles

The US Marine Corps (USMC) has formally begun its search for a ground-based air-defence system (GBADS) for integration aboard its Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs).

A request for information (RFI) issued by the Department of Defense (DoD) on 26 March called for the means to effectively defeat fixed- and rotary-winged (FW/RW), manned and unmanned aerial threats in support of the Marine Air/Ground Task Force (MAGTF) commander’s scheme-of-manoeuvre.

“The purpose of this RFI is to solicit potential solutions from industry on a FW/RW defeat capability that can be integrated onto the Marine Air Defense Integrated System [MADIS],” the RFI posted on the beta.sam.gov website said.

As noted in the solicitation, which was issued about 27 months after the corps first revealed its MADIS initiative to help field a short-term counter unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) capability, the FW/RW air-defence requirement is to be broken down into separate increments. MADIS Increment (Inc) 1, which is the subject of the current RFI, is to comprise a pair of JLTV vehicles (one Mk1 and one Mk2) to provide a short-range ability to detect, track, identify, and defeat aerial threats. MADIS Inc 1 focuses on the integration of command-and-control (C2) software onto the JLTV Heavy Guns Carrier (HGC) variant. The Mk1 vehicle will include a counter-FW/RW and a non-kinetic C-UAS capability, while the Mk2 vehicle will include a detection, kinetic, and non-kinetic C-UAS capability.

The effective range of the systems will be no less than the FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile system (noted by Jane’s Land Warfare Platforms: Artillery & Air Defence