WASHINGTON — The Army is aiming to award a contract for its highly anticipated self-propelled howitzer program by July, a spokesperson from the service’s Program Acquisition Executive for Fires confirmed to Breaking Defense today.
The July deadline, first reported by Inside Defense, represents a tight turnaround, coming just 10 months after a request for information went out to industry in September. The competition as a whole was originally delayed by months to bring it in line with the Army Transformation Initiative.
“The US Army has been re-evaluating its objectives for modernization and adjusting those objectives to best support the new Army Transformation Initiative (ATI) strategy. Comprehensive analysis has confirmed the importance of 155mm self-propelled artillery system-of-systems to the Army,” read the RFI posted in the fall. “Consequently, the US Army is considering opportunities to rapidly conduct soldier experimentation.”
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The spokesperson also confirmed to Breaking Defense that the service is planning to release a draft for prototype proposals later this month and another final one in March.
Following the September RFI, Breaking Defense obtained a copy of a formal requirements document for the program, which included provisions requiring the platform be produced domestically, have a high level of armor and the ability to fire US ammunition.
A list of competitors has yet to be publicized but among the companies known to be bidding for the award are South Korea’s Hanwha, Germany’s Rheinmetall, US-based Elbit America and a team-up of US-based Leonardo DRS and European land defense specialist KNDS.
US prime contractor General Dynamics is also a likely contender, as is British BAE Systems through its American subsidiary that currently produces the Army’s M109A7 Paladin Integrated Management (PIM) program.
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Though the directed requirement document states that the howitzers must be produced domestically, this doesn’t mean foreign companies are ruled out. For example, Mike Coulter, Hanwha’s defense head, told Breaking Defense after the requirements document was released that he’s not concerned about the domestic requirement.
“Our intent is to create capacity, build them here” in the US, he said during an interview last fall, although he said, “I don’t think we have fully fleshed out options. We have not committed to a plan.”
The Army’s new howitzer program, set to replace the towed M777 howitzers, began after it scrapped its internal development of the Extended Range Cannon Artillery platform and began searching for existing self-propelled howitzers in 2024.
As the service wrote in an industry day posting in December, the vehicles will initially replace M777s within Stryker Brigade Combat Teams, then Mobile and Infantry Brigade Combat Teams.
“The Government intends to award one contract to a single vendor via a competitive technical evaluation,” the posting read.
Ashley Roque contributed to this report.
