Predicting what the battlefield will look like decades from now may be next to impossible, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. Army can’t prepare for it. American Rheinmetall and its Team Lynx partners have made that challenge central to the development of the Lynx XM30. The goal? Engineering a next-generation combat vehicle the Army can confidently carry into the future, with the flexibility to incorporate emerging technologies and respond to threats and operational requirements that don’t yet exist.
And as the Lynx XM30 enters its next phase of development, with prototypes undergoing evaluation by the Warfighters themselves, the Army will put the hardware to the test and experience firsthand what Team Lynx already knows: the vehicle was built to learn and built to evolve.
Engineering for Requirements That Haven’t Been Written
The Bradley Fighting Vehicle has served the U.S. Army for more than four decades, undergoing successive upgrades to improve its capabilities as battlefield technology advanced. But decades of modernization illustrate the limitations of adding new systems to vehicles designed for an earlier technological era.
Bryan Grider, chief engineer for the Lynx XM30 solution at American Rheinmetall, understands those limitations. Earlier in his career, he worked on Bradley modernization efforts and saw how the addition of new capabilities placed increasing demands on the vehicle’s original design.
“You get into this situation where you have too much stuff and not enough power to move it,” Grider said. “Then as you put more power into it, you have more heat to deal with, and it continues until you have no more room to grow.”
Solving this challenge was foundational to the development of the Lynx XM30, and American Rheinmetall attacked it on several fronts, including anticipating future power demands. Its hybrid-electric drive provides what Grider described as “a surplus of power generation capability” beyond the vehicle’s current requirements. The engineering team also incorporated spare power channels into the distribution system to accommodate future electrical equipment without requiring extensive changes to the existing architecture.
Ensuring future technologies can communicate with the vehicle’s existing systems was another major priority, one that American Rheinmetall addressed through the Lynx XM30’s modular open systems architecture (MOSA). Standardized hardware and software interfaces within the architecture enable streamlined integration of future technologies, allowing new capabilities to communicate with onboard systems.
“Once those interfaces are established, you can bring in products that conform to them almost like plug and play,” Grider said. “It allows you to go faster, but you have to put in the work upfront to create that modular infrastructure, and that’s exactly what we did.”
The growing threat from unmanned aircraft offers a vivid picture of how quickly a new technology can change the nature of warfare. Few could have anticipated decades ago the extent to which drones would become a defining feature of modern combat. Their proliferation has created a growing need for advanced counter-UAS technologies capable of detecting aerial threats and sharing information with onboard systems. And if history is any indication, the Army will face threats decades from now that are equally difficult to anticipate today.
The Lynx XM30’s modular architecture was engineered with that uncertainty in mind. As new defensive technologies emerge, the Army will have a head start on incorporating them, with much of the engineering groundwork already in place.
Learning Directly from Soldiers
While Soldier input has informed Team Lynx’s development of the Lynx XM30 from the beginning – including the early involvement of former Bradley Master Gunners and feedback gathered during Army Soldier Touch Points – the upcoming Soldier Evaluation Events provide an opportunity to identify additional operational needs that may not have been apparent during earlier design reviews.
“This is the real thing,” Grider said. “Getting that definitive feedback is obviously considerably valuable. Understanding how Soldiers will use technology in situations we haven’t experienced ourselves is just as important as developing the technology itself. The two go hand in hand.”
Grider pointed to the Lynx XM30’s interior layout as an example of how Soldier experience influenced engineering decisions early on. Drawing on the operational knowledge of former Bradley Master Gunners, the engineering team repeatedly revisited how Soldiers would enter and exit the vehicle.
“We were very deliberate about how we designed the interior of the vehicle to better accommodate the dismounts as well as the crew,” Grider said. “They’re more comfortable in there, and they can rapidly egress the vehicle in the event that they need to.”
Team Lynx is eager to learn what the Soldier Evaluation Events reveal. It’s a natural progression for a team committed to building a combat vehicle that becomes an extension of its crew, informed by the experience of Soldiers who understand what modern combat demands. And if the Lynx XM30 is selected for production, the Soldiers who operate it will continue to influence its development, bringing insights from evolving battlefield conditions that today’s engineers can’t fully anticipate.
Engineering for a New Era of Modernization
With previous generations of combat vehicles, evaluating a proposed modification required extensive documentation to determine which components and systems would be affected. This took time and resources that a modern battlefield won’t wait for. The Lynx XM30’s digital engineering environment, however, creates what Grider described as a “single source of truth” linking vehicle requirements to the systems designed to fulfill them.
“It allows you to rapidly evaluate what touches what from a requirement standpoint,” he said.
Consider a future Army requirement to incorporate a new sensor. Engineers can use the interconnected digital model to identify which computers, software and electrical systems would be affected before determining how the sensor should be integrated. Meanwhile, the Lynx XM30’s standardized hardware and software interfaces provide a foundation for more efficiently incorporating that technology, supported once again by the electrical capacity engineered into the vehicle from the beginning.
“We’ve already experienced this in several areas,” Grider said. “The Army says, ‘I want this. I don’t want that,’ and we can make those adjustments in the digital model.”
Built for the Next Generation of Soldiers
For the Army, the long-term value of the Lynx XM30 lies in its ability to accommodate the changing demands of warfare. Technologies that are still in development today could become essential to combat operations a decade from now, while lessons learned by future Soldiers could lead to capabilities that haven’t yet been conceived.
American Rheinmetall engineered the Lynx XM30 with that future in mind, giving the Army a vehicle capable of advancing alongside the Soldiers who depend on it. As Grider put it:
“The Lynx XM30 is built to learn and evolve as requirements grow and change. Our adversaries will continue to develop new ways to fight, and our Soldiers deserve a vehicle that can keep pace with those threats and help bring them home safely.”