Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/89342
C CLOSE COMBAT VEHICLE is a retired Army senior NCO who served twice in Bosnia and Afghanistan. He has been a Montreal-based freelance journalist since 2011. Martin Forgues NEW BIDS, CV90 SAME CONTENDERS FOR CCV PROGRAM I t's Groundhog Day for the Canadian Forces' Close Combat Vehicle (CCV) program: all three former bidders are back on track after the process was interrupted last spring. The CCV program aims to provide the Canadian Army with a "middle-of-the-road" vehicle, between the currently used LAV III armored personnel carrier and the Leopard 2A4/A6 main bat- tle tank, both of which encountered many limitations in Canada's past campaign in southern Afghanistan. "Unlike the other vehicles in the Family of Land Combat Ve- hicles, the CCV is not replacing a vehicle in the current Canadian Forces fl eet. The CCV's fundamental purpose is to bridge the gap between the current light (5-25 tonnes) and heavy armoured (45 tonnes +) vehicle fl eets by providing the [army] with an op- erational capability that can predominantly operate with the main battle tanks and the other Canadian Forces armoured vehicles within a high-threat environment," the CF said in a September press release. The army will purchase 108 vehicles, with an option for 30 more, under four confi gurations: infantry fi ghting vehicle, artil- lery forward observation offi cer, engineer reconnaissance and tac- tical command. The CCV program has seen its share of delays. The fi rst request for proposal saw no winner. "Following the conclusion of a Solici- 30 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 www.vanguardcanada.com VBCI 25 tation of Interest and Qualifi cation (SOIQ), a Request for Pro- posals (RFP) was released to the pre-qualifi ed bidders. There were no technically compliant bids received in response to the original RFP," a spokesperson for the CF said. A second RFP, issued to fi ve pre-qualifi ed bidders in April 2012, closed on September 4. They were Germany's Artec GmbH and Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH, Sweden's BAE Systems Häg- glunds, Canada's General Dynamics Land Systems and France's Nexter. Of the fi ve, the latter three submitted bids before the September 4 deadline and will enter this next, and hopefully last, round of competition: BAE's CV90, General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada's Piranha V and Nexter's VBCI 25. Tested mettle All three comply with the CF's primary requirement for an off-