By
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on December 15, 2020 at 6:26 PM
BAE Systems’s prototype for the Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) light tank.
WASHINGTON: The pandemic has disrupted a second BAE Systems armored vehicle program, this time delaying deliveries of prototype Mobile Protected Firepower vehicles to the Army’s 18
th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg.
Earlier this year, problems with COVID and quality control at BAE’s York, Penn. factory delayed delivery of BAE’s Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle – the replacement for the vulnerable, Vietnam-vintage M113 – by several months. Now I’ve learned that COVID has also affected production of the MPF, an air-deployable light-tank, whose prototypes are being built at a BAE facility in Sterling Heights, Mich.