It has taken the Army more than 20 years to get back to providing light tank capability to its Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs). These tanks will be more lethal, easier to maintain, and able to keep up with an IBCT’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle transports. They’ll need to be air transportable via C-17 cargo aircraft, ready to fight upon landing, and capable of learning new combat tricks as they age.
After cutting through a number of proposals, only two prototypes remain, one from General Dynamics Land Systems (GD) and another from BAE Systems (BAE). The service eventually wants 504 of these new tanks; an initial 26 will begin production in 2022 after a head-to-head soldier evaluation helps determine a winner.
New weapons include the ability to launch (and counter) drones.
The Army building up its fleet of up-gunned, missile-armed Stryker vehicles for Europe and other high-risk global threat areas. The combat platform has been upgraded in a massive and powerful way with air-defense weapons, new drone attack technologies and a stronger 30mm cannon able to fire air burst rounds and other types of ammunition.
The Stryker is also being armed with laser weapons and small, vehicle-launched, recoverable drones to increase surveillance, targeting, survivability and lethality. There are multiple variables related to this series of Stryker vehicle enhancements, a move strongly reinforced by the 2021 Defense budget which nearly doubles the amount of funding allocated for the vehicles. The Army spent more than $600 million on Strykers in 2019, and then jumped the number above $1.1 billion for 2020 and 2021.
“The MPF brings a new level of lethality to our infantry forces. The SVA gives us the first opportunity to put these vehicles in the hands of our soldiers with the 82nd Airborne and begin to develop the methods by which our forces can best employ,” them, said Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, the Army’s director for the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross Functional Team.
The Army wanted to integrate existing technologies into the vehicles and avoid the kind of development that would lengthen the program schedule. The priority has always been to field this new critical capability soonest but it also will be able to accommodate additional weight and spare electrical power to support future growth, Army officials said.