Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) Low Rate Initial Production.

During our review of the Armys testing of its Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles FMTV we identified an issue that we believe requires immediate attention. The Army is planning to modify its FMTV contract to increase the number of vehicles authorized for Low Rate Initial production LRIP. The Armys justification for this modification is to prevent a break in production. We believe the contract should not be modified because the FMTVs testing has not demonstrated that it is operationally suitable. We further believe that the current contract authorizes a sufficient numoer of vehicles under LRIP to maintain production until scheduled testing can be completed. The Congress has been concerned about the sometimes significant quantity of systems produced during LRIP before operational testing has demonstrated the systems are operationally suitable for fielding. We recently reported that many of the weapon systems that start production prematurely later experience significant operational effectiveness andor suitability problems. These problems are often found after a substantial number of units have been produced and a significant financial commitment has been made. pg 1 swr