The Army last week took delivery of a Lynx XM-30 combat vehicle prototype as part of its four-decade search for a successor to the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The delivery was the first of eight vehicles that Michigan-based American Rheinmetall will provide to the Army for testing and evaluation.
The engineering and development contract for American Rheinmetall is about $764 million. General Dynamics Land Systems is also vying to replace the Bradley and delivered its prototype, the XM-30 Wolf, last month.
“Delivering our first prototype to the Army is an important step as the XM-30 Combat Vehicle program enters a more visible phase,” American Rheinmetall’s CEO Matt Warnick said in a statement. “Team Lynx now has the opportunity to show the Army that we can deliver on the promise of a modern replacement for the Bradley.”
The initial prototype contract for American Rheinmetall and General Dynamics Land Systems was about $1.6 billion. The overall program is worth about $45 billion, officials said.
The teams were tasked with designing a vehicle that included an array of lethal capabilities, including a 50mm cannon, anti-tank guided missiles, modular composite armor and an active protection system.
The new vehicle will also feature modular open system architecture, allowing the Army to plug in future improvements without redesigning the entire vehicle hardware.
Once the prototypes clear initial safety checks, soldiers will put them through their paces in large-scale combat war games. That will allow the company to make adjustments as needed before the winner of the competition is announced in late 2027.
“Executing a parallel evaluation timeline requires a level of industrial agility that Team Lynx was built for,” Mr. Warnick said. “We are proving that the U.S. Defense Industrial Base can move at the speed of operational relevance, stripping years off traditional development timelines to get the right capability to the warfighter.”
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