Latest news with #M10Booker
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Dead on arrival: Army pulls plug on M10 Booker light tank
The Army has spent well over a billion dollars on a light tank the service is now terminating, just as the program was slated to enter into full-rate production. The M10 Booker was going to be the first new combat vehicle to enter the force in four decades. The service noted its plans to cancel the M10 Booker procurement in a memo issued at the start of last month and on June 11 officially announced the program's end. 'In response to current world events and in support of the strategic objectives outlined in the Army Transformation Initiative, the U.S. Army has issued a termination for convenience of the current low-rate initial production of the M10 Booker combat vehicle and will not enter into full-rate production as originally planned,' the Army said in a statement. The Army set out to fill a lethality gap in its infantry formations, and following analysis spearheaded by Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who led the Army's future-focused efforts within Training and Doctrine Command, the service decided it needed what it called a Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle. The new light tank would offer greater survivability and lethality against enemy machine guns and light armor, but could also be air-dropped from a C-130 aircraft. Ultimately, the requirements became heavily focused on a vehicle that could be survivable in varied terrain, requiring a tracked ride, and also more lethal, which did not translate to a vehicle that could be air dropped. 'This concept of sunk cost fallacy, it is a thing that human beings generally struggle with, which is if you've invested a lot in the past, and we do this in our personal lives, you get anchored to things that are suboptimal for the future,' Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told Defense News in a June 9 interview at the Pentagon. The Booker was 'intended to be a light tank that served all of these new purposes,' he said. 'It ended up medium. I don't think the manufacturer liked it all that much, and we, the Army as a customer, kind of helped create this Frankenstein that came to be.' Historically, the Army would have continued to acquire it, despite not being all that excited about it, Driscoll said. 'We would have just made it work.' But, the service is now trying to accept it 'got it wrong,' Driscoll said. The Army had originally planned to spend over $4 billion on the program, according to a review of past service budget documents. The service would have bought between 362 and 504 systems. Original predictions for research and development costs early in the program fell in the ballpark of $1 billion, but as the Army decided to award a low-rate production contract earlier than planned to General Dynamics Land Systems following a rapid prototyping competition with BAE Systems where both delivered a number of vehicles for assessment with soldiers, the total R&D cost ended up somewhere between $349 million and $460 million, according to budget documents. The Army has so far spent at least $1 billion to build M10 Bookers. Booker turrets are built at GDLS' Lima, Ohio, plant and hulls are built in Saginaw, Michigan. Final assembly is performed at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. The cost assessment does not include the possibility of additional costs that would have been associated with a side effort under consideration to procure a new recovery vehicle appropriate for the M10 Booker. According to the latest budget documents, the Army ordered 84 vehicles between fiscal year 2022 and FY24. Another 33 vehicles were planned to be ordered in FY25. The low-rate initial production order total was 96 vehicles. An Army spokesperson said the service will not stop low-rate production abruptly. 'There are a number of M10 Bookers currently in final stages of production that will be accepted by the Army,' the spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News. The Army has 26 Booker production vehicles on hand, the spokesperson said. 'The final number of M10 Bookers will be determined once those that are in final stages of completion are accepted by the Army.' The service is known for its slow-paced acquisition efforts, but the Mobile Protected Firepower program went at a risky, fast pace. This meant industry brought designs to the table that were mature – both GDLS and BAE Systems based their designs off of fielded chassis. Initial prototypes from both competitors were delivered in 14 months from contract award so that soldiers could spend more time assessing the options in robust evaluations. 'The Army will request to reallocate the remaining funds in fiscal 20205 to accelerate fielding of war-winning capabilities and anticipates additional significant savings to be fully realized within the next 18-24 months,' the Army statement noted. 'The ongoing contract termination process will ultimately determine the disposition of the remaining assets,' the Army added.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Pentagon cancels procuring M10 Booker combat vehicles due to 'current world events'
(Reuters) -The Pentagon on Wednesday said it would cancel plans to procure M10 Booker combat vehicles that it had agreed to in a 2022 contract with General Dynamics Land Systems "in response to current world events." "The Army will request to reallocate the remaining funds in fiscal 2025 to accelerate fielding of war-winning capabilities and anticipates additional significant savings to be fully realized within the next 18-24 months," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Reuters
11-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Pentagon cancels procuring M10 Booker combat vehicles due to 'current world events'
June 11 (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Wednesday said it would cancel plans to procure M10 Booker combat vehicles that it had agreed to in a 2022 contract with General Dynamics Land Systems (GD.N), opens new tab "in response to current world events." "The Army will request to reallocate the remaining funds in fiscal 2025 to accelerate fielding of war-winning capabilities and anticipates additional significant savings to be fully realized within the next 18-24 months," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
The Army cancels the M10 Booker, a ‘light tank' that was too heavy
The Army has officially killed further delivers of the M10 Booker, canceling not just a billion-dollar program to build a heavily-armed vehicle for fast-moving infantry units, but also putting a final answer to an age-old question: is the M10 Booker a tank? 'Now that we're canceling, you can call it whatever,' Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told reporters Friday, confirming the program's end. Cancelling the Booker matches one element of an overhaul ordered by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in how the Army develops and buys weapons. In a 4-page memo released April 30, he ordered the service to 'divest outdated formations, including select armor and aviation units across the Total Army.' That apparently included the Booker, which discussed Driscoll Friday. 'We got the Booker wrong,' said Driscoll, adding that the Army already has taken delivery of roughly 80 of the tanks. 'We wanted to develop a small tank that was agile and could do [airdrops] to the places our regular tanks can't.' But the Booker, at 38 tons, can't be airdropped. 'We got a heavy tank,' said Driscoll. 'What's historically happened is we would have kept buying this to build out some number of Bookers, and then in decades in the future we would have switched. Instead, we went to the Pentagon leadership and we said, 'we made a mistake, this didn't turn out right. We're going to stop. We're going to own it.'' Another issue that irked both Army officials and lawmakers stuck with the bill for the Booker was the so-called Right-to-Repair terms in its maintenance plans. The contract under which the Booker was purchased required that the Army use the Booker's builder, General Dynamics, to address a wide range of parts and maintenance issues that Army mechanics could have addressed on their own. 'If you look at kind of comparable industries for the civilian sector, I think tractors went through this five, eight years ago,' said Driscoll. 'You had farmers who were having a hard time repairing their equipment. The exact same thing is true for soldiers. We have many instances where, for two dollars to twenty dollars, we can 3D-print a part. We know how to 3D print a part. We have the 3D printer, but we have signed away the right to do that on our own accord, and that is a sinful activity for the leadership of the Army to do to harm our soldiers. And so that is the type of thing that we are no longer going to be willing to concede to the private industry.' Sen. Elizabeth Warren was a particular critic of the Booker's Right-to-Repair language, citing it in Driscoll's January confirmation hearing. 'When right-to-repair restrictions are in place, it's bigger profits for giant defense contractors, but also higher prices for DoD and longer wait times for service members who need to get equipment repaired so they're ready to go,' Warren said in the hearing. The tracked M10's armament includes a 105mm main gun, a coaxial 7.62mm machine gun, and a .50 caliber machine gun. At under 40 tons, it is light enough that an Air Force C-17 can fly two of them, versus the plane's limit of a single M1 Abrams at a time. The M10 was the first major weapons system in the U.S. military named for a service member from the post-9/11 wars. The name Booker honors two soldiers killed in combat, including one from the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. Staff Sgt. Stevon A. Booker was a tank commander posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during the Thunder Run raid on Baghdad that opened the Iraq war. Pvt. Robert D. Booker, an infantryman in World War II, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in combat in Tunisia in 1943. Developed beginning in 2018 as the Next Generation Combat Vehicle, the Army awarded a $1.14 billion contract to General Dynamics in June 2022 to build the first 96 vehicles for the service. The Army planned to buy roughly 500 of the tanks, with the goal of equipping each of the service's Infantry Brigade Combat Teams with 14 of them.
