The Infantry Squad Vehicle went from an acquisition strategy to full-rate production in roughly five years — a relatively fast timeline for a U.S. Army program. The development path involved a competitive prototype phase, a production contract to GM Defense, operational testing that identified real reliability concerns, and a follow-up evaluation that confirmed those concerns had been addressed.
The Acquisition Timeline
2018: The Army developed an ISV acquisition strategy with an estimated requirement for 2,065 vehicles and a production start target of FY2020.
February 2019: The Army approved a procurement objective for 651 ISVs and selected three teams — GM Defense, an Oshkosh Defense–Flyer Defense team, and a SAIC-Polaris partnership — to build two prototypes each. Each team received $1 million under an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement.
June 2019: The Army awarded GM Defense a separate $1 million contract to develop two ISV prototypes for testing and evaluation.
June 2020: GM Defense won the production contract — valued at $214.3 million — to build, sustain, and field 649 ISVs, representing the initial Army Procurement Objective. The approved Acquisition Objective stood at 2,065 vehicles.
March 30, 2023: The Army approved the ISV’s transition to Full-Rate Production (FRP), revising the Acquisition Objective upward to 2,593 ISVs.
April 2023: The Army had accepted more than 300 ISVs and fielded three brigade sets of 59 vehicles each, for a total of 177 fielded ISVs.
Operational Testing: Concerns Raised and Addressed
The ISV’s operational testing history follows a familiar arc for defense programs: initial testing identifies deficiencies, the manufacturer implements corrections, and follow-up testing validates the fixes.
In 2021, the DoD’s Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation (DOT&E) assessed the ISV as effective as a troop carrier in permissive environments but identified limitations in combat roles due to reliability and training concerns.
Following the August 2021 Initial Operational Testing and Evaluation (IOT&E), GM Defense implemented corrective actions targeting the identified reliability and maintainability deficiencies. The Army conducted reliability compliance testing from June 2022 through January 2023. The 2023 DOT&E evaluation found that the ISV demonstrated a significant improvement in mean miles between system aborts compared to previous testing.
DOT&E’s assessment of system survivability — essentially, how well the vehicle and its occupants fare when something goes wrong — was not part of the follow-on evaluation and remained unchanged from the 2021 report. That is worth noting: the ISV’s reliability improved materially; its survivability profile did not change.
Fielding Status as of November 2025
According to information provided to the Congressional Research Service by the Army, ISVs had been fielded to the following units as of November 2025:
- 2/25 MBCT: 96 vehicles
- 3/25 MBCT: 108 vehicles
- 1/101 MBCT: 201 vehicles
- 2/101 MBCT: 201 vehicles
- 3/10 MBCT: 96 vehicles
- 1/82 Airborne: 59 vehicles
- 2/82 Airborne: 59 vehicles
- 3/82 Airborne: 59 vehicles
- 173rd Airborne: 40 vehicles
- 75th Ranger Regiment: 186 vehicles
Source: Congressional Research Service In Focus IF13092, “The U.S. Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV),” updated April 6, 2026.