BAE gets $818M more to build U.S. Army’s AMPVs

The U.S. Army is putting another $818 million into production of the vehicle meant to replace its Vietnam-era M113 troop carriers, part of a contract with BAE Systems that has now grown past $3.3 billion.

The Department of War said the $818 million award is a modification to BAE’s existing contract for the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, bringing the deal’s cumulative value to roughly $3.3 billion. The Army funded the work with fiscal 2025 and 2026 weapons and tracked combat vehicle procurement money. Army Contracting Command at Detroit Arsenal, Michigan, is overseeing the contract. BAE will do the work at its plant in York, Pennsylvania, with an estimated completion date of May 31, 2030.

The AMPV is a tracked, armored vehicle built to replace the M113, a personnel carrier that has been in Army service since the 1960s. It shares a common powertrain and suspension with the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle and the M109A7 Paladin self-propelled howitzer, a design choice meant to simplify maintenance for the armored brigades that operate all three. The M113 lacks the armor and mobility of the vehicles it rides alongside, a gap the Army has flagged as a survivability problem for the crews and medics who depend on it.

The Army builds AMPVs in five variants, each aimed at a role the M113 currently fills: general purpose, mortar carrier, medical evacuation, medical treatment and mission command. The full program calls for close to 2,900 vehicles across those variants, including roughly 993 mission command carriers, 790 medical evacuation vehicles, 522 general purpose carriers, 386 mortar carriers and 216 medical treatment vehicles. Together they are meant to replace the M113 across the Army’s armored brigade combat teams, where the older vehicle still makes up roughly 30 percent of the tracked fleet. Army officials have said the worldwide AMPV fleet could eventually reach nearly 3,000 vehicles over the next two decades.

Low-rate production began in January 2019, and the first AMPVs reached troops in March 2023. The Army awarded BAE a full-rate production contract worth up to $1.6 billion in September 2023, followed by a $754 million order in March 2024 covering deliveries through February 2027. The 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, became the first unit to swap its M113s for a full brigade set of AMPVs, receiving more than 130 vehicles.

Part of the Army’s ongoing need for AMPVs traces back to Ukraine. The United States has sent at least 900 M113s to Ukrainian forces since Russia’s 2022 invasion, according to a Department of Defense fact sheet on security assistance, and the Army has been buying additional AMPVs to backfill its own units. Congress set aside $250 million this year for that purpose, and Army officials told Inside Defense that lower per-unit pricing let the service stretch that money to cover 50 vehicles instead of the 38 originally planned.

BAE has also pointed to the AMPV as a possible option for allied militaries still operating older M113 variants, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, though no foreign sale has been finalized.

The contract’s cumulative value reflects the sum of all orders placed against the underlying agreement since it began rather than a single new purchase, and the Army routinely adds to it as funding becomes available. With an estimated completion date of May 31, 2030, production and deliveries under this modification will continue for several more years.