American Rheinmetall and General Dynamics Land Systems have delivered the first prototypes of their competing XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle designs to the US Army, marking the first physical hardware milestone of the service's latest attempt to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. GDLS handed over its Wolf, an evolution of the Griffin III derived from the ASCOD 2 family already in service with Spain and Latvia, at Aberdeen Proving Ground on August 28. American Rheinmetall delivered its Lynx XM30, based on the KF41 already fielded by Hungary and headed for Ukraine, on September 1 under a $764 million Engineering and Manufacturing Development contract. Both vendors will supply eight prototypes each. The two designs share a hybrid-electric powertrain, a remotely operated turret, a two-person crew and six dismounts riding in the hull, and an XM913 50mm automatic cannon that doubles the Bradley's 25mm reach; each is designed to launch loitering munitions (Switchblade 300 on the Wolf, Coyote Block 3 on the Lynx XM30, plus TOW and Javelin) and to control uncrewed ground vehicles as part of a combined-arms formation.

The Read: The XM30 is the concrete industrial answer to the doctrinal argument surfacing in this issue's Small Wars Journal essay by retired Canadian Col. Charles Oliviero: that future armor should be built around smaller, lighter, more agile platforms integrated with combined arms rather than around ever-heavier guns and armor. A 50mm cannon in a remote turret, a hybrid-electric powertrain feeding electronic warfare and sensor loads, a native loitering munition launcher, and UGV teaming built into the design are the operational answer to a battlespace where cheap drones hunt armored vehicles constantly. It is also the fourth story running this quarter about a Western prime leveraging an already-fielded platform to answer a new requirement fast, after CAPINT on the Leopard 2 hull, FENRIS on the EBRC Jaguar, and the Rheinmetall FV-014 CML from a standard ISO container. Lynx has Hungary and Ukraine behind it, ASCOD 2 has Spain, Latvia, and the British Ajax lineage behind it, and both have production lines already ramping for other customers.

The German Navy fired IAI LORA ballistic missiles from the F125 frigate Sachsen-Anhalt in the North Atlantic on the night of September 1-2, in what German Navy Inspector General Vice Adm. Jan Christian Kaack called the country's first sea-launched ballistic missile firing and the beginning of a formal procurement path. The launches used canister launchers and an embarked command trailer mounted on the frigate's flight deck, sidestepping the F125's lack of VLS cells and requiring no permanent hull modification. LORA is a 5.2 m (17 ft), 1.6-tonne quasi-ballistic missile with a stated range of approximately 400 km (250 mi) and an accuracy within 10 m, providing Germany a first ballistic-strike option since it currently has none, with only the air-launched Taurus cruise missile in the ~500 km class. The test ran under the Bundeswehr's Operational Experimentation (OPEX) framework tied to the Navy's Marine 2035 plan, and Berlin has indicated LORA could later be integrated onto the future F127 multi-purpose frigates and the planned Large Remote Missile Vessels (LRMV) that will act as uncrewed arsenal-ship wingmen.

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