I am one of the many who have not been following the Army’s problem-filled effort to buy a new somewhat armored, tactical cargo vehicle–well, okay, a new truck. The Army awarded the $3 billion Family of Medium Trucks (FMTV) contract to Oshkost last August. They won the bid by being $400 million under the other main bidder–who, of course, complained. The GAO then ruled that the competition was flawed–the problem is not that Oshkosh can’t build the vehicles at the price quoted; it’s that the bid assumed that Oshkosh had all the required tooling to make the trucks–and they don’t yet. Wow, that’s a big problem. I see it as saving $400 million for the Army–but, then again, I’m just a dumb infantryman.
