The Ministry of Defense has declared void the biggest contract of armament of the history of the Army of Land: the purchase of the new armored VCR 8x8 Dragon. The Council of Ministers on 12 July approved the purchase of 345 shielded by 2.083,2 million euros, but it was only the first phase of a program that is expected to acquire long-term 998 vehicles per 3.836 million.

The agreement of the Council of Ministers appointed by the company Santa Bárbara Sistemas, the property of the american General Dynamics, as the main contractor, to be “the only option with industrial capacity sufficient to meet the object of the contract” and to Indra and SAPA as subcontractors to main. Alleged national security reasons to attend the award procedure "negotiated without advertising".

from there began the negotiation between the Ministry of Defence and the successful bidder for signing of the contract, that must occur before the end of the year. However, the Directorate-General of Armament has rejected the offer of Santa Bárbara and has been deemed "not admissible" for reasons of technical, operational and economic. In particular, the Program Office contends that it does not comply with the requirements of the Technical Specification (PTT), or in the execution period, or the number of prototypes and vehicles or in the order of manufacturing of the different configurations. Nor does it offer financial guarantees that, in case there is some unforeseen, will not impact on an increase in the cost of the program.

Sources with knowledge of the negotiation ensures that the breaking point has been in that Defense did not want to review the specifications of the contract, because it forced him to take it back to the Council of Ministers, while the company claimed that it could not assume some conditions that the abocaban to take losses if it produced any deviation of costs.

Sources of Defense ensure that the acquisition of a new armored 8 × 8 for the Army of Earth “is a priority” and that the ceiling of expenditure approved by the Council of Ministers, remains in force so that, having failed to carry out the negotiation with Santa Barbara, it shall proceed to convene a “public competition”. This means that any company, Spanish or foreign, may be filed and that the chosen model could not be developed in the program of technological demonstrators, based on the Piranha 5 from General Dynamics that has received a public funding of 92 million euros.

This program was awarded to the UTE (Temporary joint venture) formed by Santa Barbara, Indra and SAPA for the development of the technologies needed to incorporate the future VCR 8x8. The five vehicles of the same had been delivered last July to the u.s. Army. However, the disagreements between the three partners of the joint venture meant that the delivery was delayed to November and that has now been fixed as the new date may of 2020. The Council of Ministers had to approve the last Friday an agreement that authorized the Ministry of Industry to move to the next year expected payments for this year.

The repeated failure to comply with the time limits led to Defense to activate the clause that imposes a penalty of 10.000 euros per each day of delay and to choose Santa Barbara as a contractor only for the manufacture of the vehicles, ruling out a repeat in the stage of manufacturing the experience of the UTE. Even so, it has been possible.