US Army to replace its M113 family of vehicles with armored multi -purpose vehicles (AMPV)

The U.S. Army’s AMPV family is to replace the M113 family of vehicles at the brigade level and below. The AMPV is expected to replace the M113 in five mission roles: general-purpose, medical evacuation, medical treatment, mortar carrier, and mission command. The Army determined that the development of the AMPV is necessary due to mobility, survivability, and force protection deficiencies identified with the M113, as well as space, weight, power, and cooling limitations that prevent the incorporation of future technologies.
The AMPV program entered system development in December 2014 with mature critical technologies. The program has also released over 90 percent of expected design drawings to manufacturing, which indicates a stable design. However, the overall number of drawings has fluctuated due to vehicle configuration changes and testing results.
Although the AMPV entered low-rate initial production in January 2019, the program’s manufacturing readiness level does not indicate that its production processes are in statistical control. While DOD guidance does not require statistical control of production processes until the full-rate production decision, prior work found that this DOD standard falls short of industry best practices. Further, the program office did not demonstrate its critical manufacturing processes on a pilot production line, which program officials attributed to the contractor’s need to address manufacturing process deficiencies discovered during the production of prototype AMPV units. However, program officials stated pre-production hulls were used to validate new weld processes and serve as pilots for fabrication.

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