Sheehy cautioned his industry audience that “ECP is just a means to an end. We are modernizing the fleet. It’s just that we are going through the ECP process. So I wouldn’t get caught up on the [ECP] term. We are still going to ask of you and demand from you the engineering rigor that you have to do to improve these vehicles.
“But I will tell you that ECP 1 is approved. It is a real program and we are moving forward on those vehicles. For ECP 2, or Phase 2, I have to go back an do the requirements trades to see what I can stretch out,” he added.
Shifting to what he dubbed “the battlefield we are standing on,” Sheehy offered a quick chart review of funding and industrial activities from FY 12 “and to the left” (years prior).
Soldiers from Dragon Team, Operations Group go out on a mission in their M113 armored personnel carrier during training at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. U.S. Army photo by Master Sgt. Johancharles Van Boers
“We were cranking out tanks and Bradleys at a rate never before seen,” he noted. “And you guys did a great job doing that. You guys did a great job adding to them, making sure the capabilities were there, resident on the battlefield for our soldiers to tap into and continue what we always do, which is to win the nation’s land wars. You did a great job. And we were funded to support that.”
Sheehy then moved focus “to the right” of FY 12, where projections reflected significantly smaller funding availability is being directed toward emerging ECP activities.
“ECP is not new production so it doesn’t allow us to expand the envelope of the platform,” he explained. “It is [a dashed funding line on the chart] because we recognize the risk to the industrial base. We view the industrial base in two distinct camps. There is the engineering industrial base and there is the manufacturing industrial base. It is my fervent wish to protect both sides of that industrial base. Unfortunately, I fiscally cannot do that. So we are accepting risk on the manufacturing side of the industrial base. The ECP development piece will protect the engineering side.”
He continued, “Manufacturing breaks are going to occur. I tell you that in total honesty and dissemble nothing. We are going to go through a manufacturing break.”
A possible Bradley production gap, for example, spans mid-FY 12 through mid-FY 14 before ECPs begin to get fielded. Moreover, Sheehy acknowledged that those ECPs will likely be introduced as field modifications that might not require original equipment manufacturer (OEM) production activity.
A potential Abrams production/manufacturing gap stretches from FY 13 through FY 17.
Acknowledging that explorations were under way to potentially fill those breaks through things like Foreign Military Sales and other programs, he reiterated, “This is where we are today.”
Sheehy offered a “notional schedule” for M113/AMPV, explaining, “We have not gone through MDD [Materiel Development Decision], which is the official kickoff of that effort. And as we keep slipping to the right, the schedule will keep slipping to the right. We are now forecasting an MDD somewhere in the second quarter of FY 12 – somewhere in the January or February time frame – to let us begin work on AMPV.”
The remainder of the notional schedule projected completion of the AoA in second quarter FY 13, a Milestone B decision to start engineering and manufacturing development (EMD)in first quarter FY 14, and an EMD/test phase running FY 14 through FY 16.