US Army moves forward with USD5.1 billion Common Tactical Truck competition

The US Army is moving ahead with the acquisition of a new Common Tactical Truck (CTT) fleet and has outlined its plans for a prototyping competition that could lead to a USD5.1 billion production contract for 7,265 vehicles.

The service publicly announced on 24 January it is seeking modified commercial off-the-shelf solutions that can perform tactical wheeled vehicle mission roles currently performed by Palletized Load System A1 vehicles, Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTT) A4, M1088 Tractors, and M915 Line Haul Tractors.

“The CTT will enable the army to take advantage of commercial industry's rapidly advancing fields of driver safety systems, cyber security, artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy, improved fuel economy, vehicle electrification, off-road mobility, and predictive maintenance,” the army said. “The CTT will leverage industry R&D [research and development] investments and allow the army to modernise at the pace of commercial industry, integrating new technologies with minimal cost.”

Although the army did not specify a competition timetable it said it will release a ‘request for prototype proposals' and award up to five teams with ‘prototype task assignments'. The competition will be broken into three segments with phase I dedicated to non-recurring engineering. In phase II each team will need to deliver three prototype vehicles representing the load handling system, line haul tractor, and off-road tractor mission roles. The service will test these platforms in phase III.

“The goal of the CTT prototyping effort is a [family of vehicles] that provides the army with required capabilities while incorporating as much commonality between mission roles and with commercial industry as possible,” the service said. “Aligning CTT with industry R&D enables rapid and continuous integration of future technologies that reduce obsolescence issues.”