How many bradleys are in the united states
The Army has been promising a replacement for its thousands of Bradleys since The competition announced last week is the fourth, and there are few signs that whatever doomed earlier rounds has been overcome now; the third one was axed mere weeks ago.
In , the Army launched a sweeping replacement program called Future Combat Systems , which sought to replace many vehicles, including the Bradley, using a common chassis and computer network to share sensors and communications. Supposedly, speed and sensors would compensate for diminished armor protection in the vehicles.
Moreover, the Army bit off more than it could chew by trying to develop a common hull for more than a dozen vehicles designed to perform very different missions! This time, the Army wanted the highest level of protection possible — and that led to design concepts of 50 to 65 tons , so heavy they exceed weight limits for many bridges in Eastern Europe.
While the United States was left with a fleet of aging Bradleys, other countries — namely Russia — were modernizing their equivalent military vehicles.
That led the Army to express a sense of urgency when it launched its third replacement attempt, this one called the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle.
The urgency reflected new concerns that a land conflict with the Russian military was a genuine possibility. The Army also wanted the vehicle to include revolutionary new defense systems and have a bigger gun, with a caliber twice the size of that on the Bradley , so it could outmatch its peers on the battlefield. These were highly ambitious requirements, and the Army insisted that they had to be met on a very rapid timeline.
They both work from inside the compartment, which seems no bigger than the interior of some cars. While this might seem like a major overhaul, removing and reinstalling the engines is just part of semi-annual maintenance for these armored workhorses. It's a job that can be done in as few as five hours. Craig Morales, shop foreman of Company B's maintenance platoon. It's a lot simpler than working on your [privately owned vehicle]. The Bradley engine is a huge, but compact eight-cylinder monster -- a cubic-inch motor that requires nine gallons of oil to lubricate.
What seems more impressive than the vehicles or the engines themselves is that this repair shop is miles from the nearest large base. Outside its concrete barriers are several desolate kilometers of abandoned and ransacked buildings, many of them stripped of even their outer layers of brick. Inside, COP Summers is little different, except for the Soldiers and their dozens of armored vehicles. Tanks and Bradleys are their trademark vehicles, though Company B has an assortment of other vehicles, including Humvees and the newer mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles.
Morales explained that maintenance Soldiers have to multi-task in an environment as remote as this. Most of the 17 Soldiers in the platoon are Bradley mechanics, though some specialize in repairing tanks. Once the design phase ends, the Army will take a pause and then open the competition back up for a more detailed design effort ahead of prototyping, where up to three bids will be selected to proceed.
The detailed design phase will be executed over the course of fiscal and fiscal Vehicle testing will begin in FY26 and wrap up in FY27, with a production decision planned for the fourth quarter of FY Full-rate production is expected to begin in the second quarter of FY The Army will establish a voluntary consortium beginning in January that will represent industry, government and academia in order to develop such an open architecture, according to the statement.
Jen Judson is the land warfare reporter for Defense News. She has covered defense in the Washington area for 10 years. She was previously a reporter at Politico and Inside Defense. She won the National Press Club's best analytical reporting award in and was named the Defense Media Awards' best young defense journalist in By Jen Judson. Dec 18, The U.
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