asking for a detailed design, or even a rough concept for a specific vehicle. Instead, General Dynamics OMFV director Ray Kiernan told me in an interview, the Army wants companies to come up with a flexible approach that explores a wide range of possibilities – the state of the art and the art of the possible in armored vehicle design. Those studies, in turn, will help the Army turn its current broad “characteristics” into specific performance requirements. Once the Army has specific requirements, then the competing companies can produce specific designs to meet them. But right now, the Army wants to consider the full range of options, from a souped-up Bradley carrying five or six infantry passengers, to a massive machine carrying 30 infantry, to a mini-tank carrying just one. “You could have solutions across that whole spectrum,” Kiernan told me. “What we believe General Dynamics’ role to [be] is to apply our tools to help the Army understand where the optimal solution lies within that trade space.”