15 July 2021

Target marking, fire-on-the-move fixes needed for upgunned Stryker programme, says US Army

by Ashley Roque

The US Army and an Oshkosh Defense-led team are embarking on a new upgunned Stryker ‘risk management testing' effort to fix the weapons' ability to mark targets and hit them while on the move, according to the service.

In early June the service selected an Oshkosh, Rafael, and Pratt Miller team (the latter of which Oshkosh recently acquired) to outfit Double V-Hull A1 Stryker (DVHA1) vehicles with 30 mm cannons under a programme it dubs the “Medium Caliber Weapon System” (MCWS). The winning solution, based on Rafael's Samson family of turrets but ‘customised' for the programme, was selected over bids from two other competitors: General Dynamic Land Systems (GDLS) and Leonardo DRS. Since neither competing team opted to protest the army's decision, the service is progressing with plans to get the modified vehicle ready for its first unit-equipped date in December 2023, Colonel Bill Venable, Stryker Brigade Combat Team project manager, told Janes on 13 July.

“There are risks with Oshkosh's technical solution that we're going to address through a period of testing that starts [the week of 19 July] … called ‘risk management testing',” Col Venable explained. “We will take those identified areas from the source selection, and then we will fix them. We will make those software changes, and a few other changes as well, to get better performance against the threshold requirement.”

Janes has obtained several MCWS source-selection documents that detail technical challenges with the Oshkosh solution that were unearthed during the bid sample testing phase.